Court verdict on nomination list after postal vote

The PLOTE, TULF and EPRLF (Padmanabha Group), who together submitted a common list to contest Trincomalee District but had their nominations rejected by the returning officer because they had not submitted a duplicate list, are hoping to see the RO’s ruling overturned by court on April 30.

PLOTE leader Dharmalingam Sitharthan said yesterday that because of the court vacation the verdict would be received only after the postal voting on April 28 and 29. The district has 8,517 postal voters.

Veteran politician and TULF leader V. Anandasangaree said the rule was “archaic”, and had been done away with for all other elections. He said the returning officer could have asked for a duplicate at the time the nominations were submitted; he said there had been no objections to their list from any rival party.

The EPDP nomination list was also rejected by the same returning officer on the basis that one of candidates had not signed the duplicate, but the EPDP has not challenged the RO’s decision in court.

EPDP leader Douglas Devananda said it was more like a conspiracy to get the party out of the race in the district. He wanted to know why the returning officer had not pointed out that a signature was missing at the time the nominations were handed in. He said no rival party had raised any objections.

The PLOTE, TULF and EPRLF suffered another blow in the Ampara District, where they were unable to draw up a list of candidates because the TMVP had already sounded most of those available to contest on their ticket.

The EPDP too is not contesting Ampara district. Mr. Devananda said their party had made a “no contest pact” with the UPFA in the district. “This is the way to do development work for our people – by working with the party in power,” he explained. (RA)