Court issued warrant on one respondent

In the Contempt of Court application filed against Sri Lanka Medical Council members over their failure to register a SAITM student according to the Supreme Court Judgement, the Court of Appeal yesterday issued a warrant against one respondent for failing to appear in court and directed another three respondents to submit reasons over their absence.

This application was filed against the SLMC citing all its members as respondents by the petitioner.

At the onset of the inquiry, the Court marked the presence of the respondents in the case upon the request of the petitioner's Counsel, Romesh de Silva PC and consequently, four respondents were found absent.

Manohara de Silva PC appearing for the respondents informed Court that three respondents -- Dr. Upul Gunasekara, Dr. Jennifer Perera and Dr K. D. Sundaresan were currently out of the country due to their professional duties attached to the Ministry.

However, one respondent, Dr. N.S.A. Senaratne was found absent uninformed. Thereby the Court directed the three respondents who were out of the country to submit reasons for their failure to appear before the court and a warrant has been issued against the other respondent who was absent uninformed.

Raising a preliminary objection, President's Counsel Manohara de Silva appearing for the respondents elaborated how the contempt of court matter came up.

He said firstly the Court of Appeal (in a writ application) gave a decision in favour of the petition, to register the Petitioner at the SLMC and later the respondents went to the Supreme Court against the CA order and the SC decided again in favour of the petitioner varying some parts of the CA order.

However, in the present application the petitioner has come to the court stating that the SLMC has failed to comply with the SC order as the petitioner has not yet been registered by the SLMC.

Mr. Manohara de Silva PC moved a preliminary objection in that the SC order was against the non-registration by the SLMC and consequently that order renders the petitioner to necessarily submit another application for the registration, so that respondents can comply with the SC order. "To date, the petitioner has not submitted any application with regard to that," he said.

However, further proceedings of this preliminary objection was postponed for July 22, 2019 as there was a technical error with the filing of documents in the docket of the case record. (Shehan Chamika Silva)