The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva
Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva raised a point of order under Standing Order 32(2), which requires the relevant Minister, or an authorized non-Cabinet Minister or Deputy Minister in the Minister’s absence, to be present to answer scheduled oral questions. He argued that the issue was not the constitutional status of Deputy Ministers, but whether a Deputy Minister may answer when the relevant Minister is present, noting that the Minister had subsequently left the Chamber.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 I am raising a point of order under Standing Order No. 32(2), Sir. It states, I quote:
¶ 02 “(2) The relevant Minister or in his absence the Minister who is not a member of the Cabinet of Ministers or the Deputy Minister authorized by such Minister shall be present in the House to answer orally such questions on the day they are scheduled to be answered.”
¶ 03 Hon. Speaker, your Ruling states, “A Deputy Minister, though a Member of Parliament, is not a Member of the Cabinet and does not bear direct Constitutional responsibility.” But that is not the issue here. The issue here is how a Deputy Minister can answer when the Hon. Minister is present. Now the Minister has left. I said the Minister left.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 12 September 2025 ·No. 1758618446023035 ·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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Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 12 September 2025. No. 1758618446023035. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/3177