Lanka President Rajapaksa's senior envoy departs for India

Sri Lanka today sent President Mahinda Rajapaksa's younger brother Basil to Delhi to hold talks with Indian leadership over its controversial plan to tinker with the India-moved thirteenth amendment (13A).
Basil Rajapaksa is the minister of economic development and the key political advisor to his brother. Basil is expected to meet External Affairs Minister Salman Kurshid and National Security Advisor Shivashankar Menon.
The visit comes ahead of the government plans to dilute powers of the provincial councils - a system enshrined in the Sri Lankan constitution in 1987 as a result of Indian intervention in the country's ethnic conflict with the minority Tamils.

"We are sending a senior minister of the government as a common courtesy because the provincial councils were established as a result of the Rajiv Gandhi-JR Jayawardene pact," government spokesman and minister Keheliya Rambukwella said.
"What he will do is inform India what we are going to do with the 13th Amendment. As a government, we have decided that it requires certain amendments, or changes to suit the present time. A Constitution is not cast in stone. It can be changed from time to time."
Asked if the government meant reducing police and land powers from provincial councils, the minister said: "Some may say it is an increase of powers while others may argue otherwise. Although the 13th amendment gave police and land powers to provincial councils, these powers were never exercised by them because the power was not given to them.

"Now for the first time we are proposing that we give them some police powers, may be in respect of traffic cases and at magisterial level. Anything above than can be at the national level. In practise we giving provincial councils more police powers. But in theory, one can say they will have less powers.