• PC Elections under 1988 Act, scrapping 2017 amendments

The Government is planning to hold the long-delayed Provincial Council (PC) Elections by the middle of next year under the Provincial Councils Elections Act No.2 of 1988 by abolishing the newly-introduced Provincial Councils Elections (Amendment) Act No.17 of 2017, The Sunday Morning learns.

It is reliably learnt that the bill will be submitted to abolish the amended PC Elections Act following the Local Government Elections to be held in April.

The amendment introduced in 2017 requires that any election awaits a completed delimitation process. 

This amendment, which aimed to align Provincial Council boundaries with population growth and demographic shifts, has proven difficult to implement due to political and administrative challenges.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Deputy Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Prabha Ruwan Senarath confirmed that a bill would be presented in Parliament to abolish the newly-introduced amendments to the PC Election system and revert to the old PC Election system by mid-2025.

“Although the PC Elections can be anticipated only after the Local Government Elections, we will not be able to proceed with them unless we introduce suitable amendments to the legislation. The amendments introduced by the former Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government required a delimitation report approved by Parliament, which turned out to be a joke,” Senarath stated.

According to the Provincial Councils Elections (Amendment) Act No.17 of 2017, the President must appoint a delimitation commission to prepare these boundaries, with the goal of providing equitable representation across the nation’s diverse regions. However, although the need for delimitation was recognised years ago, the report from the Delimitation Commission is yet to be completed.

A review committee, appointed in 2018 and led by then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, was supposed to finalise the new boundaries within two months, but five months later, it had still not submitted its report. As a result, PCs across Sri Lanka, which had their terms expire between 2017 and 2018, remain inactive, with public services and local governance left in a state of uncertainty. 

Deputy Minister Senarath referred to the report of the Delimitation Commission that was submitted by former Minister Faiszer Musthapha in 2018 in terms of an amendment to Section 3A(11) of the Provincial Councils Elections Act No.2 of 1988 introduced by Act No.17 of 2017. The delimitation report was unanimously rejected, with even the then subject Minister who presented the report, Musthapha, voting against it.

The Maithripala Sirisena-led Government of the time rejected calls to conduct the PC Elections under the old system. No amended or improved delimitation report for the new PC Elections system was taken up for debate in Parliament during the term of Musthapha or under any subsequent Government.