President Ranil Wickremesinghe is set to address the third session of the Ninth Parliament on August 03.

The parliament was prorogued by President Wickremesinghe with effect from midnight yesterday (28 July), via an extraordinary gazette.

The prorogation is in accordance with the powers vested in him with Article 70 (1) of the Constitution.

Accordingly, the third session of the Ninth Parliament is scheduled to commence on August 3rd at 10.30 am.

As per subsections (a) and (b) of Article 33 of the Constitution, after the end of one session of parliament and a new session commences, the President has the opportunity to ceremonially declare open the Parliament and preside over it to present the government’s policy statement.

When the Parliament is prorogued, the questions and motions which were not considered by the parliament up until then are abolished, and the Members of Parliament thus have to take it up in accordance with the standing orders.

Furthermore, the committees other than the Liaison Committee of Parliament, Committee on High Posts and Select Committees should be re constituted following the beginning of the new session.

The second session of the Ninth Parliament was from January 18, 2022 to July 28, 2022 under which the Parliament met for 48 days.

Meanwhile, Secretary-General of the Parliament Dhammika Dasanayake has called on all MPs in writing to attend the third session of the Ninth Parliament.

He informed that the following documents related to the commencement of the third session of the Ninth Parliament have already been uploaded on the official website of the parliament (www.parlaiment.lk).