Second Rights petition filed against Karuna's appointment as MP

[TamilNet, Thursday, 09 October 2008, 19:35 GMT]
A second Fundamental Rights violation petition was filed in the Supreme Court Thursday against the appointment of Muralitharan Vinayagamoorthy, alias Karuna, a renegade of the LTTE and currently the President of TMVP, as national list parliamentarian from the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA), legal sources said.

The petitioner, Jayasinghe Arachchige Somasiri, has sought the Supreme Court to nullify the appointment of Karuna as a parliamentarian, and issue an interim order against Karuna preventing him from attending parliament and voting till the final determination of his FR petition.

The petitioner has cited the General Secretaries of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), main constituent of the UPFA, UPFA General Secretary, Tilvin Silva, General Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), Karuna, Election Commissioner, and the Speaker of the parliament as respondents.

The petitioner has prayed that the SLFP and JVP formed the UPFA under an agreement to contest the last parliamentary election and three national parliamentary posts had been allocated to the JVP under that agreement. Karuna had been appointed to one of the three MP posts that fell vacant following the resignation of a JVP parliamentarian Vasantha Samarasinghe who resigned to contest the provincial council election. This has been in violation of the Memorandum of Understanding between the two parties.

The JVP general secretary has already filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the appointment of Karuna to the vacant seat.