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Merger judgment on Monday

COLOMBO: A five-member bench of the Sri Lanka Supreme Court is expected to pronounce on Monday its judgment on a case filed by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna Members of Parliament challenging the 1987 Presidential executive order on temporary merger of north and east.

The temporary merger took place in the wake of the India-Sri Lanka Accord and was to have been followed up with a referendum within a year seeking the will of the people in the two provinces on whether or not they favoured merger.

However since conditions required for a referendum _ return of all the people who had left the two provinces in view of the disturbed situation and disarming of the all the armed groups-could not be fulfilled, the exercise has been postponed every year. The petitioners sought two persons to be appointed by the President as Governors of the Northern Province and the Eastern Province. They also sought declarations that the proclamation made by the then President published in the gazette dated September 8, 1988 merging the North and East provinces into a single unit of administration and the Emergency Regulations declared on September 2, 1988 were null and void.

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