A writ petition challenging the work suspension of Parliament’s Deputy Secretary General, Chaminda Kularatne, was called before the Court of Appeal on Monday and is to be taken up again for further submissions.
The matter came before a two-judge bench comprising Court of Appeal President Justice Rohantha Abeysuriya and Justice Priyantha Fernando, Hiru News reported.
Kularatne is Parliament’s Deputy Secretary General and head of its staff, and a senior lawyer. The petition challenges the decision to suspend him from duty.
The constitutional argument
President’s Counsel Sanjeewa Jayawardena, appearing for the petitioner, was due to make further submissions responding to preliminary objections raised on behalf of the Speaker.
At the previous hearing on 15 October, Jayawardena argued that the Constitution is supreme over Parliament and all other state institutions, and that those bodies must act subject to it.
The petitioner’s side told the court that the privileges Parliament holds in order to carry out its legislative functions independently cannot be interpreted as conferring unlimited legal immunity on every decision taken in the administration of its staff.
Not reported
The filing does not state who ordered the suspension or on what date, set out the allegations against Kularatne, name the respondents, or record any order made by the court on Monday beyond the case being called again.
A note on the record
Hiru’s own English headline says the petition is to be called up “tomorrow,” while its Sinhala text says it was called up on Monday the 2nd. Those are consistent if the matter was taken up on Monday and put over to Tuesday, 3 November, and other Sri Lankan coverage of the same hearing does report a 3 November date. This desk reports both halves rather than asserting a next hearing date on a single outlet’s headline.
Single verified source. Ada Derana carried the same hearing, but has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for roughly 50 consecutive days, so its filing could not be fetched or dated and is not cited here. Earlier stages of this case — the original filing and a July listing — were covered by other outlets, but those are separate hearings and are not sources for Monday’s proceedings.