Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told Parliament on Tuesday that he has received copies of 79 petitions filed in the Supreme Court against the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution Bill under Article 121(1), in addition to nine petitions submitted on August 19, 20 and 21.

He also informed the House that copies of 15 petitions filed against the Anti-Corruption Bill under the same article had been received.

The filing timeline

The Speaker gave a date-by-date breakdown of the 79, which shows the challenge building through late August:

The concentration on August 31 — 31 petitions filed in a single day, close to 40% of the total — coincides with the date a five-judge bench was appointed and the deadline for filings ahead of the Supreme Court hearing.

What Article 121(1) requires

Article 121(1) is the mechanism by which a bill’s constitutionality is challenged. A citizen may petition the Supreme Court within a week of a bill being placed on the Order Paper, and a copy of that petition must be delivered to the Speaker at the same time — which is why these numbers reach Parliament at all. The Speaker’s statement is therefore a formal record of the challenge’s scale rather than a new development in the litigation.

Context

The figures sit alongside the counts already on record. The Supreme Court’s hearing proceeded on the basis of 67 petitions against the amendment, with 27 interveners, and the court was required to deliver its determination by September 8 under Article 121(2). That determination is expected in Parliament this sitting week.

The Speaker’s 79 figure is a count of petition copies received by his office over the filing period and does not necessarily match the 67 the court proceeded on — petitions can be consolidated, withdrawn or ruled out of time. Hiru News does not reconcile the two numbers, and no other outlet had filed on the Speaker’s statement at the time of writing.