The island of Kachchatheevu remains an intractable issue in India-Srilanka relations. Comment. (Answer in 250 words)

- The island of Kachchatheevu remains an intractable issue in India-Srilanka relations. Comment. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Kachchatheevu is a 285-acre uninhabited island in the Palk Strait recognised as Sri Lankan by the maritime boundary agreement of 26 June 1974. The sovereignty question is legally closed; the fisheries question beneath it is what remains intractable.

Body
1. What 1974 did: the Indira Gandhi-Sirimavo Bandaranaike agreement drew the boundary west of the island while preserving Indian fishermen's access to dry their nets and to attend the St Anthony's Church festival.
2. What 1976 undid: the follow-on agreement barred fishing in each other's exclusive economic zone, removing the traditional fishing right and converting a settled boundary into a daily grievance.
3. The constitutional argument: Tamil Nadu contends this was cession requiring an amendment under Berubari Union (1960), while the Union maintains it settled an unresolved boundary; petitions filed in 2008 and 2011 remain pending in the Supreme Court.
4. The real dispute is trawling: Indian bottom trawlers cross into Sri Lankan waters and hundreds of fishermen are arrested annually, and Colombo banned bottom trawling outright in 2017.
5. A Tamil-Tamil conflict: Northern Province fishermen rebuilding their livelihoods after 2009 are the fiercest opponents of Indian trawlers, which is why retrieving the island would settle nothing.
6. Politics sustains it: Assembly resolutions and the renewed controversy of 2024 make Kachchatheevu an electoral fixture in Tamil Nadu irrespective of the legal position.
7. The strategic cost: India needs Colombo on the China question, debt restructuring, the Thirteenth Amendment and connectivity such as the Nagapattinam ferry and grid interconnection.

Conclusion
Retrieval is neither legally available nor practically useful without Sri Lankan consent. The workable path is a licensing arrangement through the Joint Working Group on Fisheries, with deep-sea diversification and trawler buy-back on the Indian side.