The Constitutional Council has approved the appointment of two serving High Court judges to the Court of Appeal, clearing the last procedural hurdle before they can be sworn in.
The Council approved President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s proposals to appoint High Court Judges Navaratne Marasinghe and Manjula Thilakaratne as Judges of the Court of Appeal, NewsFirst reported.
The recommendations have now been forwarded to the Presidential Secretariat, and the two judges are expected to take their oaths before the President in the near future.
Where this sits in the process
Appointments to the Court of Appeal are not in the President’s sole gift. Under the constitutional framework, the President proposes a candidate and the Constitutional Council — a mixed body of parliamentary and civil-society members — must approve the nomination before the appointment can be made. The Council’s approval is therefore the decisive step; the swearing-in that follows is formal.
This approval completes a sequence that began last month. The President recommended the same two High Court judges for elevation to the Court of Appeal on 22 September, as the Daily Mirror reported at the time. Eleven days later, the Council has signed off on both names.
Context
The Court of Appeal is Sri Lanka’s second-highest court, sitting above the High Court and below the Supreme Court. It has been in the news repeatedly in recent weeks: the same court issued an arrest warrant for Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera in late September over contempt proceedings arising from the Supreme Court’s annulment of his presidential pardon.
The bench has also been added to during the current presidential term. Sajeewani Dilka Lakmali Karunanayake, previously an Additional Solicitor General in the Attorney General’s Department, was sworn in as a Judge of the Court of Appeal on 3 September this year to fill a vacancy — a separate appointment from the two approved this week.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not give the date of the Council’s decision, say whether the vote was unanimous, or state when the swearing-in will take place. It does not name the courts at which Marasinghe and Thilakaratne currently sit, say whether the two appointments fill existing vacancies or expand the bench, or record whether the Chief Justice’s recommendation preceded the President’s proposal, as the process ordinarily requires.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the Council’s approval at the time of writing.
A note on near-identical headlines
Sri Lankan newsrooms headline every round of these appointments in almost exactly the same words, and search results for this story are dominated by earlier rounds. An Ada Derana report titled “Constitutional Council approves two new appointments to Court of Appeal” refers to a different pair of judges — Colombo High Court Judge Adithya Patabendige and Civil Appeals High Court Judge Francis Gunawardena, who have served since June 2025. Readers searching for this story should match on the judges’ names rather than the headline.
