The wife of former LTTE Trincomalee District political head Elilan is among the candidates of Sri Lanka's main Tamil party TNA for the Northern provincial elections scheduled to be held in September.
Election officials said the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) filed its nomination papers covering all northern districts in the Jaffna secretariat today.
The TNA confirmed Elilan' wife, Ananthi Sasitharan, has been included in its list for the Jaffna district.
Its chief ministerial aspirant CV Wigneswaran, former parliamentarians Dharmalingam Sithdathan and KG Shivajilingam were among those who are vying from the district.
The election in the Tamil-majority northern province is scheduled to take place in September.
The retired Supreme Court judge Wigneswaran, a political novice, is the TNA's choice to be chief minister.
TNA is expected to come up with a stiff challenge from the Eelam People's Democratic Party (EPDP), a government ally that wields power in most of the Jaffna islets, analysts said.
Political sources said EPDP candidates would form the nucleus of the ruling UPFA (United People's Freedom Alliance) candidates list.
Its leader Douglas Devananda, who is a central government minister, is widely believed to be the UPFA's chief ministerial nominee.
The provincial election is the first since the north was separated from the east in 2006 through a Supreme Court determination.
The TNA, accused of being the proxy of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), has now been presented with the opportunity to seek people's mandate for the first time in three-decades without being clamped by the rebel group's presence.
Sri Lankan army had defeated separatist Tamil Tiger rebels after a brutal 26-year war in 2009.
