President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Thursday that a committee will be appointed to amend the law governing how Buddhist monks are held in prison and how they are transported outside it, NewsFirst reported.

He announced the decision at a special discussion with the Maha Sangha at the Presidential Secretariat. Hiru News reported earlier in the day that the meeting was set for 1:00 p.m. and would bring together clergy representing the Chief Prelates of the three nikayas.

What the committee will cover

The panel is to comprise the Attorney General, representatives of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Public Administration and the Ministry of Buddhasasana and Religious Affairs, prison officers and the Commissioner General of Prisons. It has been asked to study the matter and submit amendments within two weeks, and to propose new standing orders and regulations.

The President said he was not prepared to issue orders for particular individuals where general laws exist, and that the proper course, if current law is unsuited to present conditions, is to amend it.

The meeting followed the letter the Mahanayake Theras sent to the Commissioner General of Prisons after Ven. Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera was produced in court in lay clothing. This newsroom reported on Tuesday that all four Mahanayaka Theras had told Prisons only the Maha Sangha may remove his robes, days after he was returned to Welikada Prison to serve a six-year sentence.

Two opposition parties attack the removal

Sri Lanka Freedom Party General Secretary Duminda Dissanayake told reporters the Government had “touched the robe” and should go no further, the Daily Mirror reported.

“The Government should not get ready to set fire to the robe. You are about to undermine our history, prosperity and civilisation.”

United National Party Chairman Vajira Abeywardena said in a statement that under the Vinaya Pitaka only the nikaya to which a monk belongs may disrobe him, and that the action raised questions under Articles 9 and 10 of the Constitution, which concern the foremost place given to Buddhism and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. He said the Justice Ministry should have sought the Mahanayake Theras’ views first.

Update, 8 October evening: the President’s reasoning, and a petition reaches the Supreme Court

A fundamental rights petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking an order preventing prison authorities from producing Gnanasara Thera before court in prison attire, the Daily Mirror reported. The petitioner is a retired Air Force officer, Shantha Jayathilaka, and the respondents are the Commissioner General of Prisons, the Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General.

The petition asks the court to direct that the Thera be produced clad in his bhikkhu robes, and to declare that disrobing him and producing him in prison attire violates Articles 10, 12(1) and 14(1)(e) of the Constitution. It invokes Article 9, which requires the State to protect and foster Buddhism, and cites Prison Standing Order 550, which the petitioner says requires that, prior to conviction, a person be permitted clothing corresponding to the style of dress he previously used. It further contends that under Buddhist disciplinary rules a monk does not cease to be a monk merely because he has been found guilty of a secular criminal offence.

That last argument runs alongside, not through, the committee the President announced: the petition seeks a judicial remedy on the existing law, while the committee is to propose changing it.

The President’s reasoning, in his own words. A fuller account of the Maha Sangha meeting was reported by the Daily Mirror and by Hiru News. President Dissanayake said he would not order officials to act contrary to existing law:

“I do not wish to issue an order saying, ‘Although the law exists in this form, do this instead.’ In such a situation, the law is set aside and it becomes my law. My personal wishes should not become the law.”

He added: “Laws are not eternal or unchanging historical entities. They are regularly amended.”

The President set out the legal framework at issue — the Prisons Ordinance enacted in 1877, regulations issued by the Minister, and standing orders issued by the Commissioner-General with ministerial approval. Most of those provisions, he said, were framed with ordinary prisoners in mind, with only limited provisions referring specifically to Buddhist monks. That is the gap the committee has been asked to close, and he said provisions affecting Buddhist monks would be discussed with the Maha Sangha before being amended.

Hiru’s account describes the committee’s remit as covering the treatment and transportation of monks in prison custody — the escorting of monks to court, as well as their detention — and renders the first member as representatives of the Attorney General’s Department rather than the Attorney General personally. The two-week deadline and the rest of the composition match.

Hiru also records the meeting as taking place in the afternoon, consistent with the 1:00 p.m. start reported earlier in the day.

Update, 10 October: the regulation at issue, and 63 monks in prison

A fuller account of the same meeting, drawn from the President’s Media Division statement, was published by Tamil Guardian. It supplies the specific rule the dispute turns on, which earlier filings described only in general terms.

Of the framework governing prisons — the Prisons Ordinance of 1877, regulations issued under Section 94 of the Ordinance and last amended in 2022, and standing orders issued by the Commissioner General — the President said only one regulation, Regulation 216, refers specifically to monks. Under it, monks held on remand may keep their robes, while those sentenced to rigorous imprisonment must wear prison-issue clothing.

That is the provision under which Gnanasara Thera, serving a six-year sentence, was produced in lay clothing. The President said he had examined the cases of all 63 monks currently serving prison sentences, and that prison officials had acted under the existing rules and could not be blamed.

He is quoted as telling the monks:

“I accept that seeing a monk who was venerated yesterday in a different form today causes great distress and surprise to Buddhists and to the Maha Sangha.”

And, on why he would not simply direct officials to make an exception:

“Laws are not historic things that stay fixed in one place forever; laws are always amended. Otherwise, venerable monks, I do not wish to give an order saying do it this way while the law stands as it is. Then the law is set aside and it becomes my law. My will should not become the law.”

Who attended. Those present included the Anunayaka of the Asgiriya chapter, Ven. Narampanawe Ananda, the chief registrars of the Malwatte, Amarapura and Ramanna chapters, Buddhasasana Minister Hiniduma Sunil Senevi and Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara. The statement was issued in Sinhala.

The Kotte chapter, to which Gnanasara Thera himself belongs, was not among them — the omission it subsequently wrote to the President about.

Update, 10 October evening: the committee convenes, and its chair is named

The committee held its first meeting at the Presidential Secretariat on Thursday 9 October, the Daily Mirror reported, citing the President’s Media Division. It has been tasked with updating the regulations and standing orders made under the Prisons Ordinance.

The filing names the chair, which no earlier report had: Prince Senadheera, Secretary to the Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs. Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara provided policy guidance to the committee.

Also attending were Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and National Integration Piyumanthi Peiris, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government Wasantha Ariyarathna, Commissioner-General of Buddhist Affairs R.M.G. Senarathna and Prisons Commissioner A.C. Gajanayake.

One point of difference with the announced composition: Hiru’s account of the 8 October meeting listed representatives of the Attorney General’s Department among the committee’s members, but no such representative appears in the Daily Mirror’s list of those who attended the first meeting. Attendance at one sitting is not the same as membership, and neither outlet addresses the discrepancy.

Update, 11 October: the committee has a timetable — and it is a fortnight

Drafting has begun, and for the first time the work has dates attached. The President’s Media Division says work has started on new regulations and standing orders to allow imprisoned Buddhist monks to be taken outside while wearing their robes, on the recommendation of their respective chapters or sects, Hiru News reported.

The timetable, as the PMD describes it:

Two things follow that the earlier filings did not establish. First, the instrument is subsidiary legislation — regulations and standing orders — not a bill, which is why a two-week passage is contemplated at all; an amendment to primary prisons law could not move on that timetable. Second, the trigger for release outside prison is to be a recommendation from the monk’s own chapter or sect, placing the decision partly with the Nikayas rather than wholly with the Prisons Department.

The PMD’s framing is narrower than the question the controversy raised. It addresses monks being taken outside prison in robes — court appearances and the like — rather than whether robes may be worn inside prison, which is what Regulation 216 was invoked for in the Gnanasara case.

Update, 14 October: the report is delivered eight days early, the full committee is named, and the Maha Sangha’s own proposal carries a three-year threshold

The committee hands its updated report on the Prisons Ordinance regulations to the Secretary to the President today, Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs Ministry Secretary Prince Senadheera confirmed, NewsFirst reported at 8.07 a.m. on Wednesday. Several rounds of discussions were held in recent days on amending the regulations and standing orders concerning imprisoned Buddhist monks.

It is early. The committee was appointed on 8 October and given two weeks, which runs to about 22 October. Delivery on 14 October puts it six days into a fourteen-day mandate, roughly eight days inside the deadline. No filing makes that point.

The full membership is now on the record — the question this article has carried since 10 October, when only the chair was named. NewsFirst lists the other four members as Piumanthi Peiris, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and National Integration; Wasantha Ariyaratne, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government; R.M.G. Senarathne, Commissioner General of Buddhist Affairs; and A.C. Gajanayake of the Department of Prisons. The Daily FT, which reported the committee’s mandate on 12 October, gives the same five names and states the count explicitly: a five-member committee. (Both outlets render the names with minor transliteration differences from the Daily Mirror’s earlier list — Piumanthi/Piyumanthi, Ariyaratne/Ariyarathna, Senarathne/Senarathna.)

That resolves the Attorney General discrepancy flagged above, in the negative. Hiru’s account of the 8 October meeting listed representatives of the Attorney General’s Department among the committee’s members, and the President’s announced composition named the Attorney General. Two verified outlets now give the committee’s complete membership independently, and neither includes an Attorney General’s Department representative. The committee as constituted does not have one.

A title conflict the two filings do not resolve, but our own archive does

The two outlets give A.C. Gajanayake different ranks. The Daily FT calls him “Prisons Commissioner-General”; NewsFirst calls him “Commissioner and the Media Spokesperson of the Department of Prisons.” NewsFirst is right, and the distinction matters.

This newsroom’s reporting through 2026 has consistently recorded Gajanayake as Commissioner of Prisons (Operations, Intelligence and Media) and the department’s media spokesman — the role in which he gave accounts of the Mahara unrest, the Negombo riot and the prison population figures. The Commissioner General’s post is a different and more senior office, and it has been filled only in an acting capacity: the Cabinet said on 4 August that no permanent appointment can be made while an investigation into the former officeholder is open, and the official exercising the function this month is Acting Commissioner General of Prisons Prasad Hemantha, who appears in our own reporting as a different official from the prisons media spokesman.

So the seat the President described as the Commissioner General’s is occupied by a Commissioner, at a time when the senior post has no permanent holder. Neither filing notes this.

What the Maha Sangha actually asked for

The Daily FT supplies the substance of the Maha Sangha’s position, which no earlier filing carried. Representatives including Anunayaka Theras and Lekhakhadhikari Theras proposed that whenever a Buddhist monk is convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for more than three years, the relevant Nikaya or chapter should be informed — and that regulations should then allow such monks to be taken outside prison wearing their robes on that Nikaya’s or chapter’s recommendation.

Their stated reasoning is that routing the decision through the monk’s own ecclesiastical authority provides a transparent process while helping prevent the concession from being abused. That is the clergy, not the government, proposing the safeguard. The President is reported as acknowledging that the proposal could support transparency and instructing officials to move swiftly to a regulatory solution.

Two things follow from the threshold that no filing states. Gnanasara Thera is serving six years, so the case that triggered the controversy would fall inside a three-year trigger rather than outside it. And the President said he had reviewed all 63 monks currently serving sentences; a three-year cut-off would divide that group, but no filing reports how many of the 63 are serving more than three years, which is the number that would determine the rule’s reach.

Two unreconciled points of routing and remit

Where the report goes. The President’s Media Division said on 11 October that the proposals would go to the Maha Sangha for feedback by the middle of this week, and the Daily FT likewise describes changes “presented to the Maha Sangha for its views and recommendations before the revised regulations are adopted.” NewsFirst says today’s handover is to the Secretary to the President. These are not necessarily in conflict — a report may pass through the Presidential Secretariat before reaching the clergy — but no filing describes the intermediate step, and none says when the Maha Sangha will see it.

What the committee is for. NewsFirst describes the body as appointed “to periodically review the rules, regulations, and standing orders imposed under the Prisons Ordinance, and to update them in alignment with current religious, cultural, legal, administrative, and practical requirements.” That is a standing function. Every earlier filing, the Daily FT included, describes a time-boxed special committee convened for this one question with a two-week deadline. Whether the government has created a permanent review body or NewsFirst is characterising a one-off panel broadly is not addressed anywhere.

Not reported

Whether the committee’s amendments will be tabled as a bill is now effectively answered — the PMD describes regulations and standing orders, not primary legislation — but no filing says whether the Maha Sangha’s feedback is binding, or what happens if the fortnight passes without agreement. No filing says whether the new rules would apply retrospectively to Gnanasara Thera, or how they interact with the pending FR petition. No outlet reports the Prisons Department’s own account of why the robes were removed, beyond the President’s statement that officials followed Regulation 216.

On the report submitted on 14 October: no filing reports what it actually recommends. Whether the committee adopted the Maha Sangha’s three-year threshold, kept it, raised it or dropped it is unknown, as is whether it proposes amending Regulation 216 itself — the provision requiring sentenced monks to wear prison clothing, and the rule the Gnanasara removal was carried out under. Of the 63 monks serving sentences, no filing reports how many are serving more than three years. None says when the Maha Sangha will receive the proposals, whether the report will be published, or whether the committee is a standing review body or a one-off panel.

Four items previously listed here have since been answered: the specific regulation relied on; whether the position applies to other ordained prisoners — the President addressed all 63 monks now serving sentences; the identity of the committee’s chair, named in the 10 October evening update; and its full five-member composition, named in the 14 October update above, which also closed the question of whether the Attorney General’s Department sits on it.

On the petition: no filing reports when it will be supported before the court, which bench will take it, or whether the Attorney General has responded. Neither outlet reports whether Gnanasara Thera’s own counsel is party to it or whether he has any separate application pending — the petitioner is a retired officer acting in his own name, not the Thera or his lawyers. No filing reports a government response to the petition, and none says whether the committee’s work will be affected by it.

Sources