Sri Lanka is seeking “serious dialogue” with India for repatriation of refugees living in Tamil Nadu, its envoy said while asserting that his country wants them to be resettled back home. Austin Fernando, High Commissioner of Sri Lanka to India, said he is planning to meet the refugees in Tamil Nadu and other stakeholders to hold consultations.

The High Commissioner, without naming any party, alleged that there are at times political reasons behind the delay in the repatriation. “In India, there is also some sort of an organised attempt or an attempt by some people to have noise around this issue,” he said.

“What we know is that about 100,000 of them (refugees) are there in south India. And, nearly 20 to 30 per cent do not want to return to Lanka and stay back,” said Fernando, who took charge as the envoy last November.

He said this issue will take time to resolve and has to be done in planned manner, but for the refugee problem to be successfully settled, “we need to assure them that they will be looked after once they return”.

More than 3.04 lakh Sri Lankan Tamil refugees had come to Tamil Nadu following the ethnic violence in the island republic in 1984, a policy note of the public department, a portfolio held by Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, tabled in the Assembly had said.

According to data from the Organisation for Eelam Refugees Rehabilitation, there are 64,208 refugees living in 107 government-run camps and at least 40,000 refugees are estimated to be living outside the camps across Tamil Nadu. The NGO said that 40 per cent of the refugees in camps - run by the Central government and special camps under the Tamil Nadu government - are currently willing to return to their homeland.

However, most of them have concerns about the availability of basic services, status of their properties and access to employment opportunities in Sri Lanka.

“Sri Lanka needs to give them the feeling that they will have food, shelter, education for their children and means for livelihood when they go back. We have to work on that. We have to ensure that they are safe when they are back,” Fernando said, adding that “there are a few logistical issues... There are these basic issues like whether they will go by ferry or ships, that have to be worked out.”

More than 3,000 Sri Lankan refugees, who were staying in India, had left for their home country since 2015, the Tamil Nadu government had said last year. The refugees had been repatriated with the assistance of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, it said.