Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena has nominated a five-judge Supreme Court bench to hear the petitions challenging the proposed 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, with hearings due to begin on Tuesday.
The Chief Justice will preside. The remaining members are Justices Achala Wengappuli, Arjuna Obeyesekere, Sampath Abeykoon and Gihan Kulatunga, the Daily Mirror and NewsFirst both reported on Monday.
The matters before the bench are Special Determination petitions, the procedure by which the Supreme Court rules on whether a proposed constitutional amendment has been presented lawfully and what majority Parliament needs to pass it.
The bench was named on the day filing closed
The composition answers a question left open over the weekend. When nearly 30 petitions had been filed and the filing window was closing on Monday, no outlet had reported when the Chief Justice would constitute the bench or who would sit on it. Both details emerged within hours of the deadline passing.
Of the 30 petitions counted by NewsFirst on Sunday night, 27 opposed the amendment and three supported it. Neither outlet has published a final tally now that filing has closed.
Five judges is not a full bench
The number matters because of what the Bar Association of Sri Lanka has been asking for. The BASL filed a motion on 29 August seeking a full bench of the court, arguing that every sitting Supreme Court judge has a direct interest in the outcome because the amendment would extend their own tenure. It invoked Section 49(3) of the Judicature Act and asked for the motion to be supported in open court on 31 August, 1 September or 2 September.
A five-judge bench is larger than the three judges that hear most Special Determination references, but it is not the full court. Neither the Daily Mirror nor NewsFirst reported whether the BASL motion has been ruled on, withdrawn or is still to be taken up when the bench sits.
What the court has to decide, and by when
The amendment’s central clause would raise the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 65 to 67 and of Court of Appeal judges from 63 to 65, while capping the Chief Justice’s tenure at six years. A second clause would increase the number of Court of Appeal judges from 19 to 24.
Under the Constitution the Court has three weeks from the filing of a challenge to deliver its determination to the Speaker. That clock now governs the government’s own timetable: Cabinet spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa has placed the parliamentary debate at the end of September or early October, and Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said on Sunday that the government would not back down.
The central question for the bench is whether a two-thirds majority in Parliament is sufficient, or whether the amendment must also be approved at a referendum — the outcome the BASL is seeking.
What has not been reported
Neither outlet said what time the bench sits on Tuesday, whether all the petitions will be taken together, or how long the hearing is expected to run. Neither reported the final petition count.
The two outlets also differ on the spelling of two judges’ names: NewsFirst gives Obeysekera and Abeykoon, the Daily Mirror Obeyesekere and Abayakoon. This report follows the forms used in earlier Sri Lankan court reporting.
