The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Election Commission to take the steps required by law to conduct elections for the Kalmunai Municipal Council and the Sainthamaruthu Urban Council in the Ampara district.
A three-judge bench comprising Justices Janak de Silva, Priyantha Fernando and Sampath Abayakoon delivered the ruling in a fundamental rights petition filed by two residents of Sainthamaruthu.
The petitioners said the Sainthamaruthu Urban Council area had not been included in a 2020 gazette notification calling for nominations for local government elections, and argued that the omission violated their fundamental rights under the Constitution.
The court also directed the President, represented by the Attorney General, to issue a gazette notification specifying the number of wards, their boundaries, and the names, numbers or alphabetical designations assigned to each ward, based on recommendations of the National Committee, for both the Kalmunai Municipal Council and the Sainthamaruthu Urban Council. The bench held that those steps were necessary to ensure the electoral process could proceed within the legal framework governing local government polls.
Counsel Suren Gnanaraj appeared with Rashmi Dias for the petitioners.
Kalmunai and Sainthamaruthu are Muslim-majority local authorities in the Eastern Province whose elections have been pending due to delimitation and gazette gaps left over from the previous administration. The ruling clears the procedural blockage that had kept the two bodies in administrative limbo while local government polls elsewhere in the country went ahead under the postponed schedule. Calls for stalled provincial council elections and revisions to election laws have grown louder in recent weeks.
Source: The Island.
