The President himself has taken steps to revoke the powers vested to the Presidential Task Force headed by Ven. Galaboda Aththe Gnanasara Thera to study the implementation of the “One Country – One Law” and to draft a bill for that. Establishing this task force on October 26, the Extraordinary Gazette Notification issued by the President stated that “the duty of this task force is to study the implementation of “one country – one law” and prepare a bill for that purpose. If there are relevant amendments, it is the duty of the Ministry of Justice to submit proposals and include them in the draft.
However, the functions of the task force have been revised by a special gazette notification issued by the President on November 06. Accordingly, the task force is only required to submit proposals to formulate a conceptual framework unique to Sri Lanka, taking into account the views of various parties on the concept of one country, one law.
Justice Minister Mohamed Ali Sabri had strongly opposed to the decision of delegating the preparation of Bills which is assigned powers of the Ministry of Justice to Gnanasara Thera’s Task Force. He had even submitted his resignation letter to the President. But the President had not accepted the resignation letters.
During the discussion with the Minister of Justice, the President had acknowledged that there were some shortcomings in the gazette notification originally issued for the establishment of the Presidential Task Force.
Meanwhile, Prof. Dayananda Banda and Lecturer Mohammad Inthikab, who were members of the commission, have recently resigned from the task force. Ramalingam Chakravarthy Karunakaran, Yogeswari Sadgunaraja and Aiyam Pillai Dayananda Raja have been appointed to fill their vacancies.