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Legal snags over women’s representation; LCs’ formation may be delayed
Legal snags over having a minimum of 25 percent of women representatives in local councils will further delay their formation, Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya told the Sunday Times yesterday. He said that as a result, the formation of councils which was expected to take place early next month may be delayed till the end of the month, until the legal snags were cleared.
Mr Deshapriya said that under the Local Authorities Elections Act, not less than 25 per cent of the Council members should be women, but there is another clause which says if a party or independent group had obtained less than 20 percent of the vote, the 25 percent women representation rule would not apply to them. The Polls Chief said there were a number of councils which came under this category and would not be able to proceed as scheduled in the formation of these councils.”We need to resolve these problems, before issuing the gazette notification to form all the councils,” Mr Deshapiriya said.
Mr Deshapriya said he hoped to meet political party representatives to discuss ways of resolving the problem as the matter could not be resolved by legal means alone.
The Local Government and Provincial Councils Ministry’s Additional Secretary S.D.A.B. Boralessa said they could not seek legal recourse as the laws need to apply with retrospect effect. “The Commission should try its best to approach the 25 percent figure. There is no remedy other than that,” he said.