Muslim Congress and SLFP getting ready to contest in Jaffna, Vanni in UPF Alliance

All Ceylon Muslim Congress and Sri Lanka Freedom Party are preparing to contest in Jaffna as well as in the Vanni electoral districts, in the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance in the forthcoming Parliamentary General Elections.

Abdul Risath Bathiyutheen, Minister of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services speaking to the Asian Tribune said he has already contacted the UPFA leadership and told that he intends to nominate 2 Muslims to contest in the Jaffna Electoral district, and in the Vanni district he will be leading the UPFA team with 4 Muslims and 5 Tamil candidates.

Minister Abdul Risath Bathiyutheen further said that in total, there are 30,000 Muslim voters registered as voters of the North and are living in the Puttalam refugee camps.

These were the people he said who were chased out of the North by LTTE leader Late Velupillai Prabhkaran in 1990. These Muslims are now languishing in the Puttalam refugee camps and they are all registered voters of the Northern Province.

He said that he himself was a refugee living in Puttalam and contested and won a seat from Vanni in the 2004 parliamentary elections.

He said out of the 30,000 registered voters, 6000 of them are voters from Jaffna and the balance 24,000 are registered as voters of the Vanni electoral district.

In the meantime, Velmurugu Thangarajah, the SLFP Chief Organiser of the Jaffna district, said that they have decided to contest in the Jaffna electoral district in the ruling UPFA ticket.

He said along with him he has decided to nominate the leading SLFP Party members of the district to contest from the Jaffna district.

- Asian Tribune -