COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — M.S. Abdul Wahid, a National List lawmaker from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, resigned from Parliament on Monday, creating a vacancy in the party’s sole National List seat and setting up another change in a position that has already changed hands since the 2024 general election.
Hansa Abeyratne, the acting secretary-general of Parliament, wrote to the chairman of the Election Commission confirming that Abdul Wahid had submitted his resignation as a member of Parliament. The resignation took effect on Sept. 14, 2026, and Parliament notified the commission of the vacancy under Section 64(5) of the Parliamentary Elections Act, No. 1 of 1981.
The commission will now begin the statutory process of filling the vacant National List seat.
Neither the parliamentary notification nor initial reports gave a reason for Abdul Wahid’s resignation. The Sri Lanka Muslim Congress had not announced a replacement by Monday evening.
National List seats are allocated under Article 99A of the Constitution, which distributes 29 seats among political parties and independent groups in proportion to their share of the nationwide vote. Unlike district lawmakers, National List members do not contest an individual electorate. When such a seat becomes vacant, the party nominates a replacement and the Election Commission declares the appointment by extraordinary gazette. The new member then takes the oath before the Speaker. There is no by-election.
The SLMC’s sole National List seat has changed hands with unusual frequency. The party won three seats at the November 2024 general election, two from electoral districts and one through the National List, after receiving 87,038 votes, or 0.78 percent of the national vote.
The National List seat initially went to M.S. Naleem, a former chairman of the Eravur Urban Council. He resigned on March 14, 2025, to contest the local government election. The Election Commission later appointed Mohamed Sheriff Abdul Wazeeth, a former chairman of the Pottuvil Pradeshiya Sabha in Ampara District, to the vacancy on July 3, 2025, and he took the oath before Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne the following week. Abdul Wahid subsequently became the holder of the seat.
The SLMC was founded in 1981 in Kattankudy by a group of Eastern Province political figures around M.H.M. Ashraff and grew into the country’s principal Muslim political party. It is now led by Rauff Hakeem.
The party’s representation in the current Parliament is complicated by its electoral relationship with the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, the main opposition alliance. Hakeem returned to Parliament from Kandy District in 2024 on the SJB ticket rather than under the SLMC’s tree symbol.
Nizam Kariapper, the SLMC’s secretary-general, also entered Parliament through the SJB’s National List. His nomination came in December 2024 after the Colombo District Court issued an enjoining order preventing the SJB from submitting its National List nominations without including his name.
