Galle District MP Geetha Kumarasinghe yesterday filed an appeal in the Supreme Court challenging the Court of Appeal judgment declaring that Geetha Kumarasinghe is disqualified to be a Member of Parliament and thus not entitled to hold this office.
Through this appeal petition, Geetha Kumarasinghe sought an order to set aside the judgment dated May 3, 2017 by Court of Appeal.
The petitioner further sought an interim order to stay the operation of the judgment made in the writ application bearing No.CA Writ 362/2015 by Court of Appeal. This petition will be taken up for support on May 12.
In this petition, Geetha Kumarasinghe had cited N.W.E. Buwaneka of Beddegama, J.K. Amarawardhana of Yatalamatta, A.C. Gunasekara of Unawatuna, J.K. Wijesinghe of Ambalangoda and H.L. Prasanna Deepthilal of Galle, Controller General of Immigration and Emigration, the Attorney General and several others as respondents.
Delivering its judgment on the writ petition filed by five residents of Galle district, the Court of Appeal on March 3 held that in terms of the Article 91(1) (d) (xiii) of the constitution, the first respondent Geetha Kumarasinghe is not qualified to be elected as a Member of Parliament since she holds dual citizenship of both Switzerland and Sri Lanka.
The Court of Appeal had further directed the Attorney General to take necessary steps to formulate a mechanism to recover the expenses caused to state by Geetha Kumarasinghe while she was functioning as a Parliamentarian to sit and vote in Parliament.
This is the first time in Sri Lanka the qualifications of a Parliamentarian had been challenged through a writ petition over a dual citizenship issue.
The Court of Appeal maintained that a report submitted by the Department of Immigration and Emigration by August 2015 had confirmed that the first respondent Geetha Kumarasinghe was holding dual citizenship.