Sri Lanka sets May 6 date for local elections

Colombo, Mar 20 (PTI) Sri Lanka's local council elections will be held on May 6, the country's election commission announced on Thursday.
    The commission set the date after accepting nominations from political parties and independent groups.
    Councillors will be elected to 340 councils throughout the island. Over 17 million people are eligible to vote.
    This would be the first electoral test for the current government led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake since it won the presidential and parliamentary elections in the last quarter of 2024.
    The last local elections were held in the country in 2018 to elect councils for a 4-year term.
    However, the next local elections were postponed due to political unrest caused by the economic crisis in 2022. The elections were postponed twice in 2023 after the dates were announced by the election commission.
    The opposition at that time petitioned the Supreme Court against the postponement, claiming that the then president Ranil Wickremesinghe was depriving finances to the election commission over fear of losing the polls.
    Later, the highest court ordered that the election must be held as soon as possible and stated that Wickremesinghe as the minister of finance had violated the fundamental rights of the voters by not holding it.
    The poll process resumed after the current government brought in the necessary legal amendments to annul the previous nominations and call for fresh elections.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)