13th Amendment

Subject: IR

Context:

After November 2019 presidential polls and the August 2020 general election in Sri Lanka, the spotlight has fallen on two key legislations in Sri Lanka’s Constitution.

Concept:

• The sharp focus is the 13th Amendment passed in 1987, which mandates a measure of power devolution to the provincial councils established to govern the island’s nine provinces.
• It is an outcome of the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987, signed by the then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayawardene, in an attempt to resolve Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict that had aggravated into a full-fledged civil war, between the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which led the struggle for Tamils’ self-determination and sought a separate state.
• The 13th Amendment, which led to the creation of Provincial Councils, assured a power sharing arrangement to enable all nine provinces in the country, including Sinhala majority areas, to self-govern.
• Subjects such as education, health, agriculture, housing, land and police are devolved to the provincial administrations, but because of restrictions on financial powers and overriding powers given to the President, the provincial administrations have not made much headway.
• In particular, the provisions relating to police and land have never been implemented.
• The 13th Amendment carries considerable baggage from the country’s civil war years. It was opposed vociferously by both Sinhala nationalist parties and the LTTE. 
• The former thought it was too much power to share, while the Tigers deemed it too little