The Department of Prisons has drawn up a list of every Buddhist monk it currently holds and forwarded it to the Commissioner General of Buddhist Affairs, acting under a circular that for the first time allows monks in custody to wear their robes when taken outside prison premises.

The list went through the Ministry of Justice, NewsFirst reported on Saturday morning. It was submitted in accordance with a circular signed by the Commissioner General of Prisons amending the rules, regulations and standing orders made under the Prisons Ordinance.

Commissioner General of Buddhist Affairs R. M. G. Senaratne told NewsFirst that the list he had received would be passed to the Mahanayake Theras in due course.

The robe concession is now in force

The substantive change is that a circular issued on Friday permits Buddhist monks in custody to wear their robes when being taken outside prison premises. That is the entitlement the past fortnight’s dispute has been about, and it has now moved from recommendation to departmental instruction.

Until this week it existed only as a proposal. A committee appointed by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake handed its interim report to the Presidential Secretariat on 14 October, recommending an amendment by interim order to Departmental Order 550 so that monks leaving prison for any official purpose could wear robes, alongside a new Regulation 356A giving the prisons chief ten days to consult the Department of Buddhist Affairs when a monk is admitted.

It was done by circular, not by gazette

This answers a question this newsroom left open on Friday — but not in the form the answer was expected to take.

When prison officials briefed the Mahanayake Theras in Kandy on 16 October, Commissioner Senaka Palletenna said the amended regulations were expected to be gazetted, and that a new procedure would follow. No date was attached, and the absence of one was recorded here as unreported.

The department did not wait for a gazette. It moved by departmental circular signed by the Commissioner General of Prisons — an administrative instruction to the prison service, issued the same day as or the day after that briefing. Whether gazetting still follows, and whether the amended regulations acquire force as regulations rather than as internal instructions, is not addressed in the filing.

The list looks like the other half of the machinery

The committee proposed two instruments, and the circular as described covers one of them: robes for monks leaving prison. The list of monks currently held appears to serve the second — the consultation with Buddhist Affairs that Regulation 356A would require, applied to monks already inside rather than only to those admitted in future. The filing does not say so, and this reading is an inference from the sequence rather than anything the department has stated.

What the list does establish is that the department has identified its monastic prison population as a category and handed it to the religious authorities. Senaratne’s onward referral to the Mahanayake Theras follows the principle the four chief prelates have pressed throughout: that decisions about a monk’s robes belong to the monastic hierarchy, not to prison officials.

Senaratne helped write the rules he is now applying

The Commissioner General of Buddhist Affairs is not a neutral recipient. R.M.G. Senaratne sits on the committee itself, named on 11 October alongside chairperson Prince Senadheera, Secretary to the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs. The list therefore travels from the Department of Prisons to one of the authors of the rules under which it was compiled. No filing notes this.

A note on who signed

NewsFirst attributes the circular to “the Commissioner General of Prisons”. The Department of Prisons has had no permanent Commissioner General since at least August, when Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said the post could not be filled while a probe into the former officeholder was open, with an officer appointed in an acting capacity in the meantime. The committee’s instruction on 14 October was addressed to the Acting Commissioner General. This article does not name the signatory, because the filing does not.

The court was told this was coming

A day before the circular, the Attorney General’s counsel told the Supreme Court that the government’s committee had recommended amendments addressing exactly the grievance before it. Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena told the petitioner his grievances were being addressed, and the bench fixed the fundamental rights petition for 14 January to consider developments. The circular followed the next day — so the administrative route has moved three months ahead of the judicial one.

What it still does not reach

The concession covers robes worn outside prison premises. It does not address what a monk wears inside, where prison regulations require prison-issue clothing for those serving sentences above a three-year threshold — the gap this newsroom has flagged since the amendments were first described.

Nor does it touch the demand the campaign has since moved on to. Monks who marched from Kandy from 10 October are seeking Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera’s release, not his robes; Minister K.D. Lal Kantha ruled out a pardon on Friday, and a Colombo Fort magistrate barred 54 people from the Presidential Secretariat area the same day.

Not reported

NewsFirst’s account refers to a circular twice — once as the instrument under which the list was submitted, and once as “a new circular issued yesterday” permitting robes outside prison. Whether these are one circular or two is not made explicit, and no circular number or date of effect is given.

Also unreported: how many monks are on the list, which prisons hold them, whether Gnanasara Thera is named on it, and what the Mahanayake Theras are being asked to do with it once Senaratne forwards it. Nothing is said about whether the ten-day consultation window now applies retrospectively to monks already serving sentences, when the Mahanayake Theras will receive the list, or whether the committee’s final report is still to come.

No other verified newsroom had reported the circular or the list at the time of writing. Searches of the Daily Mirror, Hiru News, Daily FT, Island, Colombo Gazette and Sunday Times returned only earlier coverage of the committee’s recommendations; Ada Derana has been unreachable from this desk for twenty-eight consecutive days. This article is therefore single-sourced, and the circular’s existence rests on NewsFirst’s reporting alone.