Sri Lankan president’s NPP gets two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections
Colombo (PTI): Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Friday swept the parliamentary elections by winning a two-thirds majority in the parliament, the election commission result said.
The NPP, which contested under the Malimawa (compass) symbol secured 159 out of the 225 seats in the parliament, according to the results on the election commission website.
Sri Lanka’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya headed by Sajith Premadasa was a distant second with 40 seats in Thursday's poll which saw the lowest turnout since 2010.
The NPP also made history by winning the Northern Jaffna district.
In the northern Jaffna district, the cultural capital of the Tamil minority, NPP -- the predominant Sinhala majority party from the south of the country -- won the entire district over the traditional Tamil nationalist parties.
No Sinhala majority parties have won Jaffna ever before. The grand old United National Party (UNP) had previously won an odd solitary seat in Jaffna.
The NPP won the Jaffna district with over 80,000 votes and the grand old Tamil party trailed by a little over 63,000 in the final count of Thursday's polling.
This resonated pre-election comments by President Dissanayake who said his party was being accepted as a truly national party by all communities. “The era of dividing and setting one community against the other has ended as people are embracing the NPP," Dissanayake, the NPP leader, said.
The NPP under its original Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) violently opposed any attempt of power sharing -- a key Tamil demand during the armed separatist campaign of the LTTE. The Tamils only saw them as Sinhala majority racists.
The NPP received over 6.8 million or 61 per cent of the votes counted, taking a commanding lead over its rivals.
Sri Lanka’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya headed by Sajith Premadasa was a distant second with 40 seats, in a poll with the lowest turnout since 2010.
Sri Lanka went to polls amid a stabilisation crisis after a currency collapse from aggressive macro-economic policy involving rate cuts enforced with aggressive liquidity operations on top of tax cuts.
Among the unpopular measures imposed under the IMF programme was high personal income taxes which impoverished middle class wage earners by taking away earnings before they were spent.
The NPP hopes to negotiate down some of the taxes in talks to the IMF next week.
The election came a year ahead of schedule as Dissanyaake dismissed the parliament immediately after taking charge as the president in September.
The new parliament is set to meet next week.
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Three company directors held in Rs 100-crore investment fraud in Kochi
Kochi (Kerala) (PTI): Police on Sunday arrested three directors of a firm accused of cheating hundreds of investors of over Rs 100 crore through a fake investment scheme linked to agricultural tourism here, officials said.
The accused were identified as Muraleedharan, Ashik Murali and Akhil Murali, all natives of Thrissur.
The arrests were made by the Kalamassery police in connection with a fraud involving ATCOS (Agri Tourism Cooperative Society), a firm headquartered at Pathadipalam here.
Police said the company had promised high returns by collecting investments from the public in the agricultural tourism sector, but allegedly cheated hundreds of people and fled with the money.
ATCOS was registered under the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act and operated 13 branches across various districts in Kerala, besides a branch in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, officials said.
When investors failed to receive their promised returns or the invested amount, complaints were filed with the police.
Officials said around 54 cases have been registered against the firm in 32 police stations across the state, including 29 cases at the Kalamassery police station alone.
Following instructions from Kochi City Police Commissioner K S Mahesh Kumar, a special investigation team was formed under the supervision of Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Shehensha and Thrikkakara ACP Manoj Kumar.
The team traced the accused to an apartment in Amala Nagar in Thrissur, where they had been hiding after secretly renting the flat, officials said.
The bank accounts of the accused have been frozen, and steps have been initiated to trace their assets, officials said.
Police also conducted a raid at the company’s office at Pathadipalam and seized several documents related to the case.
The accused were produced before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court in Kalamassery, which remanded them to judicial custody and sent them to Kakkanad jail.
Police said they would seek the custody of the accused for further interrogation as the investigation continues.
