The Hon. Dammika Patabendi
Pallekelle was identified as a sanctuary containing both State and private lands, with the issue arising from plots held on permits rather than formal title deeds. The Minister stated that the Department of Wildlife Conservation has no objection to granting lawful ownership to eligible permit holders and will not obstruct the process, but any changes to private lands within the sanctuary require the Department’s concurrence. He added that a committee has met and the Department is ready to assist expeditiously.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Member, Pallekelle is a sanctuary under the Department of Wildlife Conservation. Within a sanctuary there can be both State and private lands. The particular issue here is that for some plots, proper title deeds have not been issued; only permits have been granted. Hence, there is a legal issue regarding lawful ownership. The Department of Wildlife Conservation has no objection to granting lawful ownership to the permit holders for those lands, and we will not obstruct the necessary processes for that. However, if any change is to be made to private lands within a sanctuary, it must be done with the concurrence of the Department of Wildlife Conservation. That is the only condition. We will not be an obstacle; and the committee has met and we are ready to extend any possible assistance from our side as quickly as possible.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 6 January 2026 ·No. 23111 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- 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/17519
Cite as: The Hon. Dammika Patabendi. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 6 January 2026. No. 23111. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/17519