The Sri Lanka-India Media Friendship Association held its third annual general meeting in Colombo on Wednesday 28 October, re-electing Nisthar Cassim unopposed as its president.
Hiru News reported that the re-election was unanimous, and that a new executive committee for the coming year was also elected at the meeting.
Santosh Jha, India’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the association’s patron, attended. He praised the role the association plays in building cooperation between the two countries’ media communities.
What SLIMFA is
The association was formed in May 2024 by Sri Lankan journalists who had travelled to India under Indian government sponsorship. Its stated purpose is to strengthen professional ties between the two countries’ press corps and to build friendship between their publics.
Hiru reported that in a short period it has organised a media festival, a masterclass on artificial intelligence, editors’ roundtables and coverage-exchange programmes.
A single-source report, and a dating caution
No verified newsroom’s report on this meeting could be dated and cited. A search returned a Daily FT article headlined “Sri Lanka-India Media Friendship Association holds General Meeting,” but its article ID (56-779101) sits roughly 20,000 below the Daily FT’s current numbering, placing it in 2025 — it covers an earlier general meeting, not this one. A Ceylon Today report on the same page of results is dated July 2025. The Daily FT’s 2026 SLIMFA coverage that could be located concerns the association’s MediaFest in July, a separate event.
“SLIMFA holds General Meeting” is, in short, a headline the association generates annually, and search returns the older instances alongside the current one. This report therefore rests on the Hiru filing alone.
The president’s name is rendered in Hiru’s Sinhala as “නිස්තාර් කාසිම්”. This report uses the spelling Nisthar Cassim, which is the form used elsewhere in our archive and in the association’s own English-language material.
Hiru’s photograph of the meeting — not reproduced here, as it carries the outlet’s watermark — shows a seated audience and camera crews in a Colombo function room, consistent with the account of a convened general meeting.
Not reported
The filing does not name the venue, say how many members attended, name anyone elected to the new executive committee besides the president, or give the association’s membership size. It does not report whether Cassim was opposed, what the association’s programme for the coming year will be, or quote him directly.