UPF asks 16 Parliamentary seats

by Thava Sajitharan

The Up-country People’s Front (UPF) submitted its proposals with regard to the new Electoral Reforms to the Select Committee on Electoral Reforms last week. Deputy Minister P. Radhakrushnan of the Up-country People’s Front told the Sunday Observer that the proposals stressed the need to “ensure at least 16 seats in the parliamentary representation for the Up-country Tamils (Malayaga Tamils)”.

Out of the 225 parliamentary seats, the number of Parliamentary representatives representing the Malayaga Tamils is 11 (4.8%) at present.

Mr. Radhakrushnan said that there wasn’t a single elected parliamentary representative from their community between 1952-1977 as a consequence of the injustice perpetuated against them by depriving the citizenship rights of the entire community.
‘Although Malayaga Tamil community had political representation in the parliament from 1977 to 2004, the representation was not in accordance with the population ratio (7.1%) of the community’