NPC demands more autonomy

By Isuri Kaviratne

Following the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) passing a resolution calling for a federal solution to the national question, NPC members have called on all Provincial Councils to support the demand for greater autonomy.

NPC Chairman Kandiah Sivagnanam told the Sunday Observer that all provinces had the right to federalism. “To protect people’s sovereignty, power should not be with the centre but with the peripheral ruling bodies,” he said. Sivagnanam said the NPC proposal for a federal solution and a merged Northern and Eastern province is backed by the Indian example, where states are defined according to the language the people in each territory speak.

The Northern and Eastern provinces were de-merged when the Supreme Court deemed the merger illegal.

Apart from linguistic federalism, the NPC resolution has proposed that Muslim majority regions within the merged North and East Provinces be granted autonomous status and similar regions be also set up for Tamils in the Central Province.

NPC Member Avanthy Sasitharan said the resolution proposes to set up a similar system as in Switzerland’s Canton system. “This will protect the rights of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the proposal is not a demand for a separate state,” she said.

The resolution in favour of a federal solution was passed by the NPC on Friday and it will be presented to the Leader of the Opposition, R. Sampanthan and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on April 30.

Sampanthan neither endorsed nor criticised the Council’s recommendation. “The NPC has expressed its views and proposed a political solution to the conflict. It is now up to the Constitutional Reforms Committee to include its proposals along with the other proposals,” he said.