A brazen act of interpolating the name of a candidate for the Moneragala district by deleting that of one approved by the Party high command is being investigated by the UNP, General Secretary Tissa Attanayake said yesterday.
The name of Provincial Council member Janaka Tissa Kuttiarachchi has been erased with white ink (tipex) and the name of Chaminda Senaka Ratnayaka, another politician from the district interpolated instead.
Initial investigations have shown that when the original list was being entered into the application form, whoever wrote the names had intentionally made a mistake while writing the name of Tissa Kuttiarachchi and got General Secretary of the UNP to initial the mistake.
Thereafter, Mr. Kuttiarachchi’s name had been entirely tipexed and the name of Mr. Ratnayaka entered. He did not know about the change until the list was displayed on the notice board.
Mr. Atttanayaka told the Sunday Times the Party was trying to identify the persons who were behind changing the nomination list without approval from the Party. “What happened is totally unacceptable and we will support Mr. Kuttiarachchi to get justice,” he said adding they would support any legal recourse the PC member would take.
Mr. Kuttiarachchchi said he had signed his nomination papers at the UNP headquarters on February 25 and only learnt that his name had been erased and replaced with another after the close of nominations on last Friday.
“There are some Monaragala UNF seniors who are opposed to me because I am popular in the area. They are behind this,” he alleged.
Ranjith Maddumabandara is the leader of the UNP in the Monaragala district and has been a long time critic of the party leadership along with Johnston Fernando who earlier joined the Government.
Elections Department officials in Colombo said they were yet to receive a complaint in this regard.
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