Mr. Speaker - The Hon. (Dr.) Jagath Wickramaratne
Informed the House that the Speaker’s Certificate was endorsed on the “Universities (Amendment)” Bill on 3 February 2026 under Article 79 of the Constitution. He also notified Parliament under Article 121(1) that a petition regarding the “Rent (Repeal)” Bill had been filed in the Supreme Court. He referred an “Irida Lankadeepa” report alleged to be defamatory of Parliament and a possible breach of privilege to the Committee on Ethics and Privileges under Standing Order 146.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Under Article 79 of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, I wish to inform the House that on 03rd February, 2026, I endorsed the Speaker’s Certificate on the “Universities (Amendment)” Bill.
¶ 02 Under Article 121(1) of the Constitution, I wish to inform the House that I have received a copy of a petition presented to the Supreme Court in respect of the “Rent (Repeal)” Bill.
¶ 03 With regard to a news report published in “Irida Lankadeepa” on 11.01.2026 titled “Strict action against employees using ‘ice and cigarettes’ in Parliament – directive from the Speaker,” it has come to my attention that it contains a statement defamatory of the character of Parliament, amounting to a breach of Parliamentary privilege under Section 7 of Part A of the Parliament (Powers and Privileges) Act, No. 21 of 1953. Under Standing Order 146, I hereby refer this matter for inquiry and report to the Committee on Ethics and Privileges.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 5 February 2026 ·No. 23269 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/12819
Cite as: Mr. Speaker - The Hon. (Dr.) Jagath Wickramaratne. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 5 February 2026. No. 23269. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/12819