> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Provincial Polls and Hospital Transfers Dominate Indian Envoy’s Farewell Dinner - URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/provincial-polls-and-hospital-transfers-dominate-indian-envoys-farewell-dinner/ - Published: 2026-11-14T07:11:24.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-14T07:11:24.000Z - Author: Our Reporter - Tags: JM Exclusive, November 2026 Tamil political leaders used a farewell dinner for India’s departing High Commissioner, Santosh Jha, to voice concern that Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power government is steadily drawing powers away from the provinces. Several predicted that provincial council elections would not be held during the government’s current term. The dinner, on the night of Friday, 13 November, was held at the residence of India’s Deputy High Commissioner, Maitrey Kulkarni. It brought together about 15 representatives of Tamil-speaking parties from the Tamil, Muslim and Up-country Tamil communities. It came a day after President Anura Kumara Dissanayake presented the 2027 budget to Parliament, and much of the conversation at the table followed from it. People who attended described the evening as a social occasion, one of a series of farewells before Mr Jha ends his assignment in December. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the gathering was private. Accounts differ on one remark by Mr Jha. Some guests understood him to have said that he did not expect provincial council elections to be held during the government's current term. People familiar with the conversation offered a different account. They told Jaffna Monitor that Mr Jha had observed that the next national election was due in 2029, referring to the presidential election. He had not suggested, they said, that provincial council elections would not be held before then. The same people noted that India continues to raise the matter in its engagements with the Sri Lankan government, and has consistently encouraged the holding of provincial council elections in keeping with Sri Lanka’s Constitution. They pointed to the visit of India’s Foreign Secretary, Vikram Misri, to Colombo in August, when provincial council elections featured prominently in his public remarks. Mr Jha took up his post in December 2023, having served in Colombo once before, from 2007 to 2010, when he worked on India’s post-war development assistance. Sri Lanka has not held provincial council elections in more than a decade. The Northern Provincial Council has had no elected members since its term ended in 2018\. The councils were created by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted in 1987 after the Indo-Lanka Accord, and they remain the only constitutional arrangement for sharing power with the Tamil-majority north and east. The government has not announced a date for the polls. In May, Tilvin Silva, general secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the party at the core of the NPP, said they could not be held this year. The budget speech did not mention them. Speaking in Parliament on the day of the dinner, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, the parliamentary group leader of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, or ITAK, said: “Not a single word about the Provincial Council election!” At the dinner, one participant told Mr Jha that the government was gradually taking away powers associated with the 13th Amendment, and complained that Tamil political leaders were not doing enough to resist it. Others said provincial and, in some cases, local council responsibilities were being moved to the centre. The clearest example raised was in the budget itself. The government proposes to move six district general hospitals from provincial to central administration. Four are in the Northern Province, at Mannar, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya and Kilinochchi, and two are in the Western Province, at Gampaha and Avissawella. Mr Dissanayake told Parliament that residents had asked for the change and that it would give them care at the level of national hospitals. Central administration could bring more money and specialist staff to the four northern hospitals, which is the government’s stated aim. Some Tamil representatives at the dinner said the cost would be the loss of one of the more substantial powers devolved to the provinces, and warned that the transfer could set a precedent for further centralisation. The hospital question also exposed divisions among the Tamil MPs. Sivagnanam Shritharan, an ITAK member of Parliament for Jaffna, said Tamil politicians themselves bore responsibility for the weakening of provincial powers, according to people present. He criticised representatives who support handing provincial institutions to the centre in return for development benefits. He spoke in Tamil, apparently addressing Mr Jha. No interpreter was immediately available, one participant said, and it is unclear how much of the exchange the High Commissioner followed. Mr Shritharan has been at odds with M. A. Sumanthiran’s faction of the party for nearly three years. He defeated Mr Sumanthiran in ITAK’s leadership election in January 2024, but court orders have kept him from taking up the post, and early this year the party replaced him as its parliamentary group leader with Mr Rasamanickam. One source said Mr Shritharan’s criticism was aimed at colleagues including Selvam Adaikalanathan, the leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, who the source said had backed the transfer of a provincial hospital to central administration. Another participant said he had asked Mr Adaikalanathan why he supported a move that ran against devolution, and that Mr Adaikalanathan replied that it was the decision of the Bishop of Mannar and that he could not go against the bishop. The Mannar hospital is among the six named in the budget. Jaffna Monitor could not independently verify the exchange. One participant said it had been a mistake to air such disagreements before a foreign diplomat. Tamil leaders, he said, should have presented a united case for India’s support on devolution, and an open display of division risked being taken as a joke in a diplomat’s eyes. The divisions extend beyond the dinner. At an ITAK meeting held that morning, which Mr Shritharan did not attend, some MPs argued for a firmer stance against the government over provincial powers, Mahaweli land concerns, spending priorities and wartime accountability, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Others favoured a more cooperative approach, and some proposed seeking another meeting with Mr Dissanayake to ask him directly not to remove existing devolved powers. Another ITAK MP was less hopeful. There was little point, he argued, in asking a President who had just used his budget to take powers from the provinces to kindly refrain from doing so. Guests also asked about Indian-supported projects in the north. The budget speech did not mention the Kankesanthurai port or Palaly airport, and some participants read the omission as a sign of uncertain commitment on the Sri Lankan government’s part, noting that governments usually cite major foreign-funded projects even when their timing is uncertain. People familiar with the project, however, told Jaffna Monitor that work on the port would begin soon, before Mr Jha leaves. India has committed about $61.5 million in grant aid to redevelop the port, a figure the High Commission has put at $65 million including consultancy work. The Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation, Anura Karunathilaka, said this month that negotiations on the agreement were in their final stage. His ministry says a new passenger terminal at Palaly is due by July 2027, funded partly outside the Treasury budget. The concerns of the Up-country Tamil community also surfaced. In a press release the same day, Mano Ganesan, leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance, said the budget gave no housing figures for the plantations and had not made clear how much land would be allocated or how many families would benefit. At the dinner, one participant raised a separate land dispute involving the Seetha Amman temple at Seetha Eliya in Nuwara Eliya district. The guest list reflected India’s long practice of engaging with minority parties across communities and party lines. Participants said those present included Mr Sumanthiran, C. V. K. Sivagnanam, Mr Rasamanickam and Mr Shritharan of ITAK; Mr Adaikalanathan, Dharmalingam Siddharthan and Suresh Premachandran of the Democratic Tamil National Alliance; Rauff Hakeem of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress; Rishad Bathiudeen and M. A. M. Thahir of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress; Mr Ganesan, Palani Thigambaram and V. Radhakrishnan of the Tamil Progressive Alliance; and Senthil Thondaman of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress. Douglas Devananda, the former minister and leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party, also attended. There were lighter moments. One participant said he had remarked, in jest, that although Mr Jha was retiring from the diplomatic service, he might one day return to Sri Lanka as a minister in the Indian government, as S. Jaishankar, a former career diplomat, went on to become India’s External Affairs Minister. India has not announced Mr Jha’s successor. The budget debate continues in Parliament, where the hospital transfers and the absence of provincial elections are already being contested. The Tamil parties, as the evening itself made plain, remain divided over how firmly to oppose the government on either.