The Hon. Aravinda Senarath
Hon. Aravinda Senarath rejected the suggestion that land permits are being withheld on ethnic or religious grounds, stating that the Government acts without distinction among Sinhala, Tamil, or Muslim citizens. He said the Government would inquire into alienated lands, Mahaweli lands, and other State lands in the relevant area and, where appropriate, take steps to issue permits. He requested that relevant information be submitted so the responsible institutions can be notified and the process regularized.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, through his second supplementary question, the Hon. Member tried to suggest that permits are not issued because one is Muslim. That was the implication raised. We can discuss separately the policies followed by previous governments. However, the present Government does not issue permits or take administrative action based on ethnicity — Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim. We treat all as citizens of this country. Regarding your question, we will conduct a proper inquiry into lands in the area — alienated lands, Mahaweli lands, and other State lands that may exist — and if they are lands that should be given to the people, we will, as a Government, act to issue permits. If you submit the relevant information, we can notify the respective institutions and regularize that work.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 21 January 2026 ·No. 23242 ·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/2066
Cite as: The Hon. Aravinda Senarath. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 21 January 2026. No. 23242. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/2066