Sri Lankahas denied plans to outlaw the singing of the national anthem in Tamil after the main minority party raised strong objections to the mooted ban.

The status quo will remain, said public administration minister John Seneviratne, who is in charge of managing the code of conduct for the national anthem as well as the national flag.

“There is no decision to make a change with regard to the anthem and we will continue what we have been doing,” Seneviratne told AFP.

However, housing minister Wimal Weerawansa, told the Ada Derana that he supported any move to outlaw the Tamil rendition of the anthem.

“Only in Sri Lanka you have the national anthem translated into another language and sung. This is a joke,” Weerawansa said. “What the government is doing is to correct a wrong practice that has been in place since 1978.”

In reply to Minister Wimal Weerawansa who called the singing of the National Anthem in Tamil a ‘joke’, TNA Media Spokesman MP Suresh Premachandran said that the Minister’s comments only proved his ignorance on the matter. He claimed that the Indian Anthem was written by a person of low caste in his own language which was later translated to Hindi while in countries like Switzerland, Canadaand South Africathe National Anthems are sung in multiple languages.

Premachandran further added that the government is attempting to kill the Tamil culture within the country while adding that Tamil areas that were liberated during the war are being exposed to a cultural invasion.