COLOMBO, AUG 6 (PTI): The Tamils of Indian origin would press for the creation of a Non-Territorial Tamil Community Council in Sri Lanka when the Constitutional reform process gets underway, TPA leader Mano Ganesan said Thursday.
Ganesan, the Tamil Progressives Alliance (TPA) leader met India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri along with other leaders of the newly formed group of Sri Lankan Tamil and Indian-Origin Tamil (IOT) community on Wednesday when he spoke about the role envisaged for the Non-Territorial Tamil Community Council (NTTC).
The Constitutional reform must not only safeguard devolution but also recognise the democratic aspirations of the Indian-Origin Tamil community through the inclusion of the NTTC in the Constitution, Ganesan stressed.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, Misri called upon the Sri Lankan leadership to implement their commitment to hold Provincial Council elections at the earliest and to fully implement the Constitutional provisions of Sri Lanka to meet the aspirations of the Tamil people.
Ganesan told PTI, “There is understandable concern that a new Constitution could weaken the gains of the 13th Amendment, particularly (for) Provincial Councils. Given its historic role in the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord, India has both the moral standing and legitimate interest to caution against any constitutional process that dilutes devolution.”
Recalling that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) had pledged to resume the Constitutional process that began in 2016 from where it was suspended, Ganesan said, “The 2016 Steering Committee’s Interim Report did not propose weakening the 13th Amendment. Instead, it recommended strengthening the Provincial Councils and deepening devolution.”
Ganesan said he served alongside President Dissanayake on the Constitutional Steering Committee and that it would be both politically and morally inconsistent to now weaken or abolish Provincial Councils.
“We will engage constructively in the constitutional process, but we will not compromise on protecting devolution, strengthening power-sharing, and securing constitutional recognition for the NTTC,” Ganesan said.
Misri stressed the holding of early Provincial Council elections that have been on hold since 2018 due to a legal snag stemming from the electoral reform process.
“I conveyed to Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri that President AKD has publicly assured that the new constitutional process will recommence from the point where it was suspended, with an inclusive framework that incorporates the 13th Amendment. THE IOT community also looks forward to submitting the NTCC proposal to this new constitutional process,” Ganesan posted on X later on Thursday.
The meeting was attended by TPA deputy leader Radhakrishnan, Ceylon Workers’ Congress general secretary Jeevan Thondaman and Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Santosh Jha, alongside representatives of Sri Lanka’s IOT community.
Sri Lankan government’s response to criticism that the system may have been rendered useless now with no political will on the part of protagonists to make it work has been that elections could be held after the conclusion of the current Select Committee deliberations.
The Select Committee is probing if the elections could be held under the previous proportional representative system doing away with the attempt in 2017 to introduce a hybrid system.
In April this year, a statement from the Parliament’s press office said the cross-party Select Committee to recommend the selection of the electoral system to hold the election had asked the Attorney General’s department to prepare a dossier on the legal position to understand the difficulties to hold the election.
India has been pressing Sri Lanka to implement the 13th Amendment (13A), which was brought in after the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement of 1987 and provides for the devolution of power to the Tamil minority dominated areas in the island nation through Provincial Councils.
The Provincial Council elections have not been held since 2014 due to the 2017 Provincial Council Elections Amendment Act.
The Indian intervention came in the midst of a bloody armed campaign by the LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader V Prabhakaran.
Ruling NPP’s dominant partner Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) had then led a bloody rebellion against the Indo-Lanka Accord between the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan president J R Jayewardene.
The issue was also raised during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Colombo in April 2025 and the Indian government, at frequent intervals, has urged the Sri Lankan government to hold the delayed provincial council elections as soon as possible.
Saturday, August 8, 2026