The President's Office issued a fresh gazette notification Thursday, the third in a space of two weeks, to summon Parliament to meet on May 8 for a new session after it was found that the two previous gazette notifications were either incomplete or faulty.
In the President’s proclamation issued on April 12 proroguing Parliament, May 8 was fixed as the date for the start of the new Parliamentary session but it failed to give a time for the sittings to commence.
To correct this, another gazette notification was issued on April 23 which states that “by virtue of the powers vested in me by Article 70(4) of the Chapter XI of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, I, Maithripala Sirisena, President, do by this Proclamation summon Parliament to meet at the Parliament Hall, Sri Jayawardenepura, on the Eighth day of May, Two Thousand and Eighteen at 02.15.”
However, there was a mistake in this Gazette notification as the powers are vested in the President to summon Parliament under Article 70 of the Constitution and not Article 70 (4).
Hence the President‘s Secretary Austin Fernando issued yet another Gazette notification on Thursday to correct this mistake.
It said the proclamation of April 23rd “” should be corrected “to read as “by the powers vested in me by Article 70 of the Chapter XI of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, I, Maithripala Sirisena, President, do by this Proclamation summon Parliament to meet at the Chamber of the Parliament, Sri Jayewardenepura, on the Eighth day of May, Two Thousand and Eighteen at 02.15 p.m.”
(CK)
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