Sri Lanka’s provincial elections to be delayed further

COLOMBO: Council elections in Sri Lanka's nine provinces, pending since 2014, are set be delayed further as a cross-party select committee has asked the legal position to understand the difficulties in holding polls, it was announced Friday.

A statement from the Parliament's press office said the cross-party select committee to recommend the selection of the electoral system to hold the election had met on Tuesday with the Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath in the chair.

The committee has decided to ask the Attorney General’s department to prepare a dossier on the legal position to understand the difficulties to hold the election, the statement said.

India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement the 13th Amendment (13A), which was brought in after the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement of 1987 and provides for the devolution of power to the Tamil minority dominated regions in the island nation through provincial councils.

The provincial council elections have not been held since 2014 due to the 2017 provincial council elections amendment Act. The delay since 2018 was caused by the need to demarcate electoral division boundaries to make way for the new hybrid system of elections from the original proportional representation, the committee pointed out.

The delimitation commission report relevant to the 2017 amendment has not been handed to the president by the then prime minister as the law required.

Accordingly, the select committee had decided to ask the Attorney General to scrutinise the legal status, the statement said.

Officials from the independent election commission and the Attorney General’s Department were present at the select committee deliberations.

The Indian intervention came in the midst of a bloody armed campaign by the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader V Prabhakaran.

The Indian troops were deployed in Sri Lanka in July 1987 to oversee the implementation of the Indo-Lanka Accord between the then Sri Lankan President J R Jayewardene and the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Ruling party National People's Power's (NPP) dominant partner Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) had then led a bloody rebellion against the Indo-Lanka Accord between the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan president J R Jayewardene.

The issue was also raised during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Colombo in April 2025 and the Indian government, at frequent intervals, has urged the Sri Lankan government to hold the delayed provincial council elections as soon as possible.