The Hon. (Mrs.) Nilanthi Kottahachchi, Attorney-at-Law
Hon. (Mrs.) Nilanthi Kottahachchi raised a breach of parliamentary privilege over reports in the Daily Mirror, Lankadeepa, and a Daily Mirror social media post alleging that her party, the National People’s Power, had instructed her not to speak to the media. She denied the allegation as false and said its publication and circulation without verification was defamatory and affected her privileges as a Member of Parliament. She requested that the matter be referred to the Committee on Privileges for inquiry and appropriate action, and tabled the Daily Mirror issue of 19.02.2025.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I raise a matter of breach of parliamentary privilege.
¶ 02 The Daily Mirror of 19.02.2025 has carried a false report about me. Also, on the Daily Mirror social media account dated 18.02.2025, it stated: “First time MP Nilanthi Kottahachchi has said that she was asked not to speak to the media by her party.”
¶ 03 On 19.02.2025, both the Daily Mirror and the Lankadeepa newspapers, and on 18.02.2025 the Daily Mirror social media account, published these allegations without verifying facts. The claim that my party, the National People’s Power, instructed me to refrain from speaking to the media is false. This false news is being widely shared on social media with various comments, and the printed newspapers have also spread it.
¶ 04 Such irresponsible and defamatory reporting without verification violates my parliamentary privilege as an MP. I request that this matter be referred to the Committee on Privileges for inquiry and appropriate action.
¶ 05 I table the Daily Mirror of 19.02.2025.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 20 February 2025 ·No. 1740657427093848 ·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.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/16405
Cite as: The Hon. (Mrs.) Nilanthi Kottahachchi, Attorney-at-Law. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 20 February 2025. No. 1740657427093848. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/16405