Northern Provincial Council Election: Good Governance and Women’s Representation

Ground Views

Sri Lanka’s Tamils Hold Hope
Image courtesy The Telegraph

The merged North-Eastern Provincial Council was an administrative unit that came into being and existed as a structure in Sri Lankan administration. Consequent to the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord and the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Sri Lankan Constitution a degree of devolution was granted to the provinces. In terms of the Provincial Councils Act No. 42 of 1987 the Northern and Eastern Councils were merged to form as one provincial council to function thereof. The first election to the said merged N-E Province was held on the 10th December 1988 and Mr. Annamalai Varadaraja Perumal was chosen as its Chief Minister. The elected council was functional until Mr. Varadaraja Perumal chose to allegedly declare a Unilateral Declaration of Independence of theN-E Provincial Council into an independent State upon which the said Provincial Council was dissolved by the centre and the administration was brought under direct control of the centre by the then President Ranasinghe Premadasa. There were no elections held for the said provincial council thereafter until 2006. However, the Council as a Provincial Administrative Unit continued to function minus elected representatives until the year2006 under the Governor. The Supreme Court in a judgment delivered in 2006 in cases filed by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna against the merger of the two provinces declared the said merger to be invalid. Hence the merged provincial structure was demerged in 2006. Subsequently elections have been held in 2008 and 2012 for the Eastern Provincial Council.