Sri Lanka ready to welcome and support refugees from India: Minister Bimal Rathnayake

Sri Lanka's Minister Bimal Rathnayake announces support for Indian refugees, urging political sensitivity from Tamil Nadu and India.

Sri Lanka is ready to receive and support all those forced to flee the country during the civil war and now living as refugees in Tamil Nadu, Cabinet Minister and Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake told The Hindu, urging the Governments of India and Tamil Nadu to refrain from using refugees as “a tool for political propaganda”.

The Minister made the remarks when queried about the government’s current position on refugee-returnees from Tamil Nadu, in the wake of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s letter — dated February 15, 2026 — to Prime Minister Modi seeking the Union government’s intervention on issues concerning Sri Lankan Tamils living in India for over four decades. Apart from requesting New Delhi to rescind administrative instructions barring consideration of citizenship applications from Sri Lankan Tamils, Mr. Stalin sought an executive clarification waiving passport and visa requirements, where appropriate, for citizenship or long-term visa applications based on verified identity documentation issued by the Tamil Nadu government. According to Mr. Stalin’s letter, around 89,000 individuals reside in and outside camps across Tamil Nadu. Nearly 40% of them were born there.

Pointing out that 18,542 persons returned from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka in the 16-year period from January 2009 — the civil war ended in May that year — to June 2025, Minister Rathnayake said: “We are certainly ready to welcome those who wish to return. However, if some of them, born in India, or who have lived, studied, and worked there for decades, or married an Indian, decide to seek Indian citizenship, we cannot argue with that position. It is their reality and their right to seek citizenship there.” Further, in a message to political actors in India, he said: “My humble request to the Government of India and Government of Tamil Nadu is that please don’t use the refugees as a tool for political propaganda around elections. They have endured enormous suffering already; we must treat their request with care and sensitivity.”

A prominent voice in the ruling Anura Kumara Dissanayake administration, Mr. Rathnayake, who is a polit bureau member of the leftist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or People’s Liberation Front, had visited refugee camps in Tamil Nadu in 2007, and pushed the Sri Lankan government to pass a law granting citizenship to 28,500 persons living in the camps. In May 2025, when former Jaffna MP and senior lawyer M.A. Sumanthiran highlighted the arrest of a 75-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil refugee returning from India, on charges of leaving the island without a valid passport, Mr. Rathnayake said the government would address the matter. “The government immediately instructed the Immigration Department and police not to detain those returning, citing their departure from a so-called illegal port decades ago,” he said.

Mr. Stalin’s letter to PM Modi drew wide attention in Sri Lankan media and among politicians. Mano Ganesan, Opposition MP and leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance — representing the Malaiyaha Tamils — called for a “permanent, humane solution”. “Sri Lankan refugees living inside and outside settlements in India need clarity, not decades of uncertainty. Give them a dignified choice… a generation born, educated and integrated in India deserves justice. Others deserve freedom of choice,” he said in a social media post.

Also read: Sri Lankan refugees | The long wait for Indian citizenship