The Supreme Court has ordered that counter-objections in a fundamental rights case over the government’s handling of Cyclone Ditwah be filed on 12 February, pushing a challenge first lodged in January into its second year.

The petition asks the court to rule that the state violated fundamental rights by failing to take steps to limit the damage from the cyclone despite weather forecasts having already been published, Hiru News reported.

Friday’s hearing

The case was called on Friday before a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena and Justices Arjuna Obeyesekere and Gihan Kulatunga.

State counsel told the court that the Attorney General has filed preliminary objections to the petition. The bench then directed the petitioner to file counter-objections to those objections, if he wishes to, on 12 February.

The petition was brought by Keerthi Bandara Kiridena, an attorney who lives and practises in Kandy.

Who has been named

The respondents include the President, members of the Cabinet, officials of the Department of Meteorology, officials of the Mahaweli Authority, and the Attorney General.

That list is the substance of the claim: the argument is not that the cyclone was unforeseen, but that forecasts existed and the institutions that received them did not act on them in time.

How the case got here

The timetable has moved slowly. The Daily Mirror reported on 15 July that the Supreme Court had fixed 30 October to take up the petition for support, with the Attorney General given two months to file limited objections and the petitioner allowed limited counter-objections if needed. Friday’s order is the next step in that sequence — the objections have now been filed, and the petitioner has been given until February to answer them.

Not reported

The filing does not say what grounds the Attorney General’s preliminary objections rest on, and preliminary objections of this kind often go to whether a case can be heard at all rather than to its merits. No date has been set for argument on the substance, and the court has not yet decided whether to grant leave to proceed. The amount of relief sought is not stated.

At the time of writing, no other verified newsroom had filed on Friday’s order.