Colombo, Dec 14 – Colombo International Container Terminals (CICT) has announced a significant equipment addition that will enhance the terminal’s deep water capacity and make Colombo one of the few ports in Asia capable of handling vessels of 22,000 + TEUs. The Company said the enhancement encompasses the addition of two new mega Quay Gantry […]…
Colombo, Dec 14 (newsin.asia) – The following are the foreign exchange rates against the Sri Lankan rupee released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on Friday. Buying Selling Australian Dollar 126.31 131.73 Canadian Dollar 131.95 136.90 Chinese Yuan (Renminbi) 25.44 26.67 Euro 200.23 207.39 Japanese Yen 1.5536 1.6113 Singapore […]…
Yusuf Molla, a farmer in Rajshahi's Tanore, has at least 200 rare and almost extinct varieties of paddy in his collection that he has developed over the years out of love for the crop. During a visit last month, this correspondent found 77 sections in Yusuf's land. Each section had a signboard carrying the name of the variety cultivated there. Each variety has a distinct texture, colour, smell, and taste.…
It was the fond hope of Sri Lankans that a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the dissolution of the Sri Lankan parliament would usher in a truce between President Maithripala Sirisena and the ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and bring the curtains down on the standoff between the Executive Presidency and the parliament. But the court’s ruling that the dissolution of parliament by the President was unconstitutional, has not resolved the conflict between Sirisena and Wickremesinghe or between the institution of the Executive Presidency and the legislature. President Sirisena has vowed that he will continue to fight Wickemesinghe even if he continues to enjoy majority support in parliament. …
Sources close to the President told newsin.asia that this means that Sirisena will continue to conduct cabinet meetings as the Head of the Government, but will not participate in its decision-making process. However, he will continue to exercise his powers as the constitutional Executive President, Head of Government and Head of State.Given the nature of the Sri Lankan constitution which endows the Executive President with vast and decisive powers, an Executive President can put spokes in the wheel of the cabinet and countermand its decisions.…
But Sirisena has a plan to continue his resistance to Wickremesinghe. After hearing the judgment on Thursday he told his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) that if he has to appoint Wickremesinghe he will not participate in the government's decision-making process but will continue to carry out his responsibilities as the Executive President. This could mean that the Executive Presidency will be pitted against the Prime Minister and his cabinet. An Executive President could put spokes in the cabinet's wheel, forcing the government to come to a grinding halt. But the scenario will be radically different if the United National Front puts forward Sajith Premadasa as its Prime Ministerial candidate, sources close to the President said.…
Colombo, Dec 13 (newsin.asia) – Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court, on Thursday, ruled against President Maithripala Sirisena’s decision to dissolve Parliament and conduct a snap Parliamentary Election in early January. A seven judge bench headed by Chief Justice Nalin Perera, delivered the verdict saying the President’s decision was unconstitutional with Chief Justice Perera further explaining that if […]…
Colombo, Dec 13 (newsin.asia) – The following are the foreign exchange rates against the Sri Lankan rupee released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on Thursday. Buying Selling Australian Dollar 126.86 132.29 Canadian Dollar 131.89 136.85 Chinese Yuan (Renminbi) 25.48 26.71 Euro 200.33 207.48 Japanese Yen 1.5535 1.6113 Singapore […]…
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost 180 seats that it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 162 across three state assemblies--Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Chhattisgarh--as results were declared on December 11, 2018, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of electoral data. In 2013, the BJP won 377 seats and the Congress 118 in these three states. The BJP had no seats in Mizoram in 2013, and this is the first state election for Telangana, which was created in 2014. This means the BJP lost 48% of the seats it won in 2013, and the Congress gained 137%.…
The petitioner alleged that first Respondent Ranil Wickremesinghe held, as at the time of the Parliamentary Elections held on August 17, 2015, a financial interest in several contracts entered into by public corporations on behalf of the Republic of Sri Lanka with his family company “Lake House Printers and Publishers PLC”, by virtue of his having been a major shareholder of the said company.…
Colombo, Dec 12 (newsin.asia) – Sri Lanka’s Parliament, on Wednesday passed a vote of confidence on ousted Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe with 117 lawmakers in the 225 member Parliament voting in favor of it. The vote was taken as Mahinda…
Colombo, Dec 12 (newsin.asia) – Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court, on Wednesday re-fixed for Friday, a petition filed by challenged Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa over an interim order which temporarily suspended him and his cabinet from functioning as a government, local…
Hindutvic rhetoric will have to be matched by performance on the economic front if it is to be effective because Hindutva can only be icing on the cake as past experience shows.But extremist and ideologically driven parties like the BJP do not set out of the established line and think anew. Therefore the BJP will continue to favor the big corporations; hope that the middle classes will be taken care of by mesmerizing Hindutvic and nationalistic rhetoric; and the farmers will be silenced by promises of higher Minimum Support Prices - all policies which have failed to deliver the goods.…
In case the Supreme Court allows parliament to be dissolved (as desired by President Sirisena), the draft constitution prepared by committees appointed by the dissolved parliament will have to be abandoned. Assuming that members of the new parliament are sufficiently interested in having a new constitution, the entire process will have to re-started from scratch.…
Since Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014, a series of top government economic personnel have quit. The list is long considering the fact that the Modi regime is only four years old. Those who have quit so far are two Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governors, Raghuram Rajan and Urjit Patel; a Vice Chairman of the NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya, and a Chief Economic Adviser, Arvind Subramanian. Anyone watching the Modi government’s handling of economic affairs would know that the stated reasons for quitting and the sweetly worded tweets were but attempts to hide the ugly truth that these eminent men were unable to work under Modi’s crassly political agenda set by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). …
As political uncertainty continues in Sri Lanka after President Maithripala Sirisena sacked the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on October 26 plunging the country into a constitutional crisis, Sri Lankans hold divergent views and positions on the manner in which their leaders have behaved. The takes of ordinary Sri Lankans—Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims—vary from scathing remarks to total support for some of the principal political actors, including Sirisena and Rajapaksa who was ‘appointed’ as PM in place of Wickremesinghe.…
Sri Lankan political parties representing minority communities like the North-Eastern Tamils, Indian Origin Tamils and Muslims, appear to have lost faith in the Presidential system, with a directly elected President wielding enormous executive powers. They also vehemently oppose President Maithripala Sirisena’s proposal to tweak the 19 th.Constitutional Amendment to enhance his powers in the guise of removing some procedural anomalies in the legislation. …
Colombo, Dec 14 – Colombo International Container Terminals (CICT) has announced a significant equipment addition that will enhance the terminal’s deep water capacity and make Colombo one of the few ports in Asia capable of handling vessels of 22,000 +…
Colombo, Dec 14 (newsin.asia) – The following are the foreign exchange rates against the Sri Lankan rupee released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on Friday. Buying Selling Australian Dollar 126.31 131.73 Canadian Dollar 131.95 136.90 Chinese Yuan…
Colombo, Dec 13 (newsin.asia) – The following are the foreign exchange rates against the Sri Lankan rupee released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka on Thursday. Buying Selling Australian Dollar 126.86 132.29 Canadian Dollar 131.89 136.85 Chinese Yuan…
Until favorable results come away from home, India’s No. 1 Test ranking may slowly become irrelevant, writes Kanishkaa Balachandran in The Hindu.…