The Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports has temporarily suspended the registration of motor sport’s national governing body by Extraordinary Gazette and placed its administration under the ministry’s secretary, pending a rewritten constitution and fresh elections for office-bearers.
The gazette was issued under the signature of Minister Sunil Kumara Gamage, NewsFirst reported at 8.10 a.m. on Saturday. The Secretary to the Ministry has been appointed as the competent authority to oversee amendments to the body’s existing constitution and to complete the process of electing new office-bearers, and has been vested with authority to manage and administer its affairs until an annual general meeting is held.
Hiru News reported the same step at 7.55 a.m., 15 minutes earlier, and adds the one detail NewsFirst omits: the suspension has been made effective immediately.
One body, two names
The two filings name the suspended organisation differently, which reads as a discrepancy and is not one.
NewsFirst calls it the National Sports Association for Motor Racing. Hiru’s Sinhala calls it the ශ්රී ලංකා මෝටර් රථ ක්රීඩා සම්මේලනය — the Sri Lanka Motor Sports Federation.
The gazette itself, reproduced in the image published with the NewsFirst report, resolves this. It does not name the organisation at all. It uses the Sports Law’s generic formula — suspending the registration of “the National Sports Association in respect of the under-mentioned sport” — and then lists the sport in a schedule. The single schedule entry reads “Automobile.”
So NewsFirst has rendered the statutory description, and Hiru has used the body’s own name. Both point at the same organisation.
The statutory basis, which neither filing states
Neither report cites the law the minister acted under. The gazette image does, and it is legible: the notification is headed as “Registration made by the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports under Sections 32 and 33 of Sports Law No. 25 of 1973 as Amended.”
That is the same mechanism used in May, when the same minister suspended the Handball, Hockey and Carrom federations and vested their administration in the same ministry secretary, on the same stated grounds of amending constitutions and holding transparent elections. It is also the statute that underpinned the Sri Lanka Cricket transformation committee in April.
The gazette’s operative clauses follow the May template closely: the secretary is appointed competent authority to secure “the proper administration of the affairs” of the association and to complete the constitutional amendment process, and the vesting lasts until office-bearers “are duly elected at an Annual General Meeting held in accordance with its amended Constitution.”
The gazette is older than the reports
The masthead of the reproduced gazette is a Tuesday issue dated October 2026. The gazette number and the day of the month are not legible at the published resolution, but the four Tuesdays in October 2026 fall on the 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th. The 27th has not yet occurred, so the notification is at least four days old by the time it was reported on Saturday 24 October.
Neither filing gives the gazette number or its date, and neither explains the gap.
Not reported
Neither report gives any reason for the suspension — no governance finding, audit, dispute, or complaint is cited. Neither says how long the suspension is intended to last, whether scheduled motor sport events or licensing are affected, or whether the suspended office-bearers have responded.
Neither names the ministry secretary now holding the body’s powers, nor gives a date for the annual general meeting the gazette makes the condition of restoring normal control.
Sources: Motor racing association registration temporarily suspended by extra-ordinary gazette — NewsFirst, October 24, Registration of motor sports federation temporarily suspended — Hiru News, October 24 (Sinhala).
