The committee set up to protect land in the Eastern Province met for a second time on Wednesday afternoon (16) at the Presidential Secretariat and instructed officials to produce a report on unauthorised land acquisitions within two months, the government news portal news.lk reported.
The meeting was chaired by Chief of Presidential Staff Prabath Chandrakeerthi.
Officials were asked for information on three categories: unauthorised construction along the Eastern Province coast, encroachment of State land, and unauthorised occupation of land belonging to the Department of Wildlife Conservation. District Secretaries and Divisional Secretaries are to supply the underlying information.
Separately, the committee decided to obtain an interim report on unauthorised construction along the Arugam Bay coastline — singling out the province’s best-known tourism strip ahead of the wider two-month deadline.
The panel also reviewed the field inspections it has carried out so far.
Who is running it
news.lk names Senaka Palliyaguruge as Chairman of the Eastern Province Land Protection Committee, while recording that Wednesday’s meeting was chaired by the Chief of Presidential Staff.
That is worth setting against how the body was announced. When President Anura Kumara Dissanayake ordered the committee established in May, at a Special District Coordination Committee meeting in Ampara, the President’s Media Division said it would be headed by a Deputy Inspector General of Police. The current account describes neither a DIG chair nor a police presence. news.lk does not explain the change, and does not say whether Palliyaguruge holds police rank.
Also attending were Prof. P. B. Terney Pradeep Kumara, Director General of the Department of Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management; W. W. M. P. S. C. Palamakumbura, Conservator General of Forests; and Manjula Amaratne, Additional Director General of the Department of Wildlife Conservation.
Context
The committee’s remit dates from the President’s May visit to the East, where he said land seizures carried out through the misuse of political power and political affiliation would no longer be tolerated, and instructed the security forces to prevent unauthorised land reclamation. At the same meeting he called for a scientific plan to address coastal erosion, saying rocks and barriers were not a long-term answer.
Arugam Bay featured in that discussion too — but as a tourism zone to be developed, alongside Panama. The committee is now examining unauthorised building on the same coastline, which places the development ambition and the enforcement exercise on the same stretch of shore.
Not reported
news.lk does not say how many unauthorised structures or encroachments have been identified so far, which districts or divisions the field inspections covered, or what enforcement action — demolition, prosecution, regularisation — is contemplated once the reports arrive. It gives no date for the interim Arugam Bay report, does not say when the committee first met, and does not indicate whether any structures have been removed.
It does not say how many officials sit on the committee, whether affected landholders or the provincial administration are represented, or what happens to occupants of State and wildlife land if they are found to have no title.
No verified newsroom had carried this second meeting at the time of writing. The committee’s original appointment in May was reported by EconomyNext, Daily FT and The Island, so the absence of commercial coverage here reflects the meeting’s low profile rather than a lack of interest in the subject.
