Vavuniya High Court freezes governors removal of mayor

The Vavuniya High Court has issued an interim order suspending the gazette through which the Northern Province governor removed the Vavuniya mayor, S. Kandeepan, from office, freezing the decision that had triggered protests across the town.

The order was made on Friday, when the court took up a writ application filed by Kandeepan challenging the governors move. Speaking to reporters afterwards, his counsel, the Presidents Counsel and ITAK figure M.A. Sumanthiran, said the petition had been filed the previous day against the gazette removing Kandeepan as mayor of the Vavuniya Municipal Council. Notice had been served on the respondents, he said, though they did not appear, possibly because it had been issued only the day before.

Satisfied with the matters set out in the petition and the submissions made on the mayors behalf, the court directed that notice be served on the respondents and granted all three interim orders the petitioner had sought. The first suspends the operation of the gazette removing Kandeepan from the mayoralty and from his seat on the council; the second restrains the respondents from taking any action based on it; and the third bars any move to appoint or elect a replacement mayor, or another member in his place.

The interim orders will remain in force until the matter is taken up again on 15 July, when the respondents are expected to appear and state their position. Kandeepan was represented by Sumanthiran alongside the attorneys-at-law R. Thayaparan and Kesavan Sayanthan.

The governor, Nagalingam Vethanayahan, removed Kandeepan last month through an Extraordinary Gazette issued under powers vested in his office, stripping him of both the mayoralty and his elected seat on the council. The move, part of a pair of dismissals that also removed the Chavakachcheri Urban Council vice chairman, drew protests in Vavuniya, where demonstrators condemned it as the unseating of an elected local representative by an appointee of the central government. Critics had also warned that vacating the mayors seat could allow the ruling party to reshape a council it had failed to win at the ballot box, a manoeuvre the courts third order, barring any replacement, now blocks for the time being. The governor has made no substantive public statement on the matter.