COLOMBO: Justice Kanakasabapathi Sripavan will be the second Tamil to be Chief Justice of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court when he takes over on Friday following the retirement of Shirani Bandaranayake.
The first Tamil to hold the highest judicial post in Sri Lanka was Suppiah Sharvananda, who served between 1984 and 1988.
Born in 1952, Sripavan was educated at the Jaffna Hindu College and the Law College in Colombo. After a short stint at the private bar in the late 1970s, he joined the Attorney General‘s Office as a government counsel. He rose to be Deputy Solicitor General before he was appointed a judge in the Court of Appeal. He was party to many landmark judgments when he was raised to the Supreme Court.
As the then Chief Justice, Mohan Peiris, was due for removal on the grounds that his appointment was illegal, Lanka’s new President, Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, chose to be sworn in by Justice Sripavan rather than CJ Mohan Peiris. At any rate, Sripavan was the senior most Supreme Court judge.
Sripvan’s predecessor, Shirani Bandaranayake, had assumed office on Wednesday following her re-instatement through a Presidential order sacking Chief Justice Mohan Peiris. However, on re-instatement, she said she would put in her papers for retirement. According to her attorney, K Neelakandan, she was not interested in the office but only wanted justice to be done to her, and that was done when she was reinstated.
However, sources said PM Ranil Wickremesinghe and his United National Party did not want Bandaranayake to continue as Chief Justice because she had earlier ruled that the draconian 18th Amendment introduced by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was in accordance with the constitution. The 18th Amendment had repealed the 17th Amendment to abolish the Independent Commissions and to lift the cap on the number of terms a President could seek. The 17th Amendment, which had set up Independent Commissions, was the brainchild of the UNP.