Sri Lanka Elections Commissioner issues guidelines on using state properties for election purposes

Sri Lanka's Elections Commissioner has called on all heads of government institutions to charge the applicable fees when providing state properties to political parties for election propaganda work.

Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dishanayake has issued a circular to all government institutions that while state properties have to be issued to political parties according to the order of the requests, the relevant fees needed to be levied when providing such state properties.

According to Dishanayake, if state properties are provided without charging the relevant fees, it would be considered as a misuse of public property.

The circular has further stated that if a request made by a political party to use state properties for election work is rejected, reasons for the rejection has to be given in writing.