Sri Lanka local council elections on March 9th

The upcoming Local Government (LG) election will be held on 09 March 2023.

This was announced by the Election Commission of Sri Lanka today (21 Jan.).

The accepting of nominations for the upcoming election commenced at 08:30 a.m. on 18 January, and closed at 12 noon today.

The acceptance of cash deposits for the election also closed yesterday (20 Jan.), after it began on 18 Jan.

Meanwhile, the Regulation of Election Expenditure Bill was also passed in Parliament on Thursday (19 Jan.), with a majority of 61 votes.

The Bill was passed in Parliament with 97 votes in favour, while 36 MPs voted against the Bill.

Several political parties in the opposition including the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), however, expressed their discontent about scheduling the debate for today, citing the government’s attempts to pass the bill hastily in a bid to postpone the local government election, while various election monitoring organisations too, have raised concerns pertaining to the Bill, deeming the law inadequate.