18 July 2016 08:09 am
The committee headed by senior administrative service official Asoka Peiris told Daily Mirror he had, more or less, finalised his work in sorting out discrepancies in the delimitation of electoral wards to conduct the next election under a new system - a mix of the Proportional Representation System and the First Past the Post System.
According to the present law, the subject Minister has to announce the electoral wards in a gazette notification for the polls to be conducted by the Elections Department. Also, the subject Minister has to announce the number of members
to be elected. Once the report is out, Local Government and Provincial Councils Minister Faizer Musthapha will get the opportunity to act for conducting the election.
One third of members will be elected on the proportional representation basis and the rest on the First Past the Post system. Mr. Peiris told Daily Mirror more than 5000 electoral wards would be created. He identified shortcomings in around1800 wards.
“Mostly, there were issues such as the creation of wards without reflecting the multi-ethnic character of the areas concerned.
We corrected it. Instead of multi-member wards, we converted them to single member seats. It means two single member wards were created in place of one multi-member seat,” he said. Mr. Peiris said he also remained engaged with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) regarding ward creation in the North and the East.
Already, the Supreme Court has been petitioned seeking to conduct the election as soon as possible. Altogether, there are 335 local bodies in the country. (Kelum Bandara)