Mahinda Rajapaksa in Delhi

It is good to know that Mahinda Rajapaksa has chosen India as his first port of call after taking over as prime minister after resignation of Ranil Wickeremesinghe.  His brother also visited India first marking a sharp deviation from their earlier tilt towards China. Mahinda is back to power after 5 years. He does not want to repeat the mistakes of previous term and is cautiously going for healthy relationship with India. New York times has published that Mahinda received foreign funding from china during elections.

Mahinda is known internationally for crushing the LTTE permanently. Mahinda is a strong advocate of Buddhism and has huge mass base in the Sinhalese region. It took the lives of several people before Mahinda announced complete victory on 18 May 2009 over LTTE. Mahinda made a strong China push. Mahinda works under his brother,Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is the president.

Both brothers have been reiterating that they wouldn’t take any steps that would be detrimental to India’s interests. NDA government is also hopeful that Sri Lanka would reconcile with India. Rajapaksas admit that their earlier relationship was strained due to misunderstandings.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval have already met both brothers in Sri Lanka.