Twenty-two Special Determination petitions challenging the constitutionality of the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill are listed for hearing before the Supreme Court today, 20 October.
The petitions go before a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena and Justices Achala Wengappuli and Sampath Abayakoon, the Daily Mirror reported at 9.12 a.m. Hiru News names the same bench and the same count, filing at 9.57 a.m.
The bill was placed on the Order Paper of Parliament on 6 October. Under Sri Lanka’s constitutional scheme, a bill can be challenged only in the narrow window between tabling and enactment, and only by way of a Special Determination — which is why twenty-two separate challenges have converged on a single hearing date.
What one petition asks for
Samagi Jana Balawegaya parliamentarian Ajith P. Perera is among the petitioners, and his filing is the most fully reported. He asks the court to declare Clauses 26, 27, 28, 29, 60(3)(c), 60(7) and 68(2) inconsistent with Article 3 read with Article 4 of the Constitution — a finding that would force the bill onto the Article 83 route, requiring a two-thirds parliamentary majority and approval by the people at a referendum.
Three objections are specified:
- Bail moves up the court hierarchy. The bill restricts magistrates’ power to grant bail, vesting it in the High Court instead.
- Rehabilitation without a charge. The Secretary would be empowered to refer individuals to rehabilitation programmes without their being charged with, or convicted of, any offence.
- Restriction Orders drawn broadly. They may prohibit association with persons or entities merely reasonably suspected of an offence under the bill.
The second petitioner this desk has covered
Former minister Udaya Gammanpila is also named among the petitioners. His petition, filed on Monday, asks for the same remedy Perera seeks — a determination that the offending clauses cannot pass on a simple majority — and names the Attorney General as respondent. At the time of that filing, neither outlet reporting it indicated how many other challenges existed. Today’s figure of twenty-two is the first published count.
Not reported
Neither filing lists the remaining twenty petitioners, states which clauses the other petitions target, or says whether the bench will hear all twenty-two together or in batches. Neither reports a response from the Attorney General, and neither says when a determination is expected. Ada Derana, which has covered earlier stages of this bill, could not be fetched — its CloudFront block on this host is now in its thirty-second day.
One caution for readers searching this story themselves: Sri Lanka’s 2023–24 Anti-Terrorism Bill was a different bill, challenged in a different Supreme Court round, and outlets use “anti-terrorism bill” loosely for both. The bill before the court today is the 2026 Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, tabled on 6 October.
Update, 20 October: the hearing has begun — and the petition count is now in dispute
The Supreme Court commenced hearing the petitions on Tuesday, Hiru News reported at 11.29 a.m., describing the hearing as under way before the same three-judge bench of Chief Justice Surasena and Justices Wengappuli and Abayakoon.
Hiru’s account of what the petitioners are asking matches the filings reported this morning: that certain clauses of the bill violate fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and that the court should accordingly determine that those clauses can be passed only by a two-thirds majority in Parliament together with approval at a referendum.
Three different numbers, all published on one morning
The one thing that is no longer settled is how many petitions there are.
| Source | Time (Colombo) | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Mirror / Hiru, ahead of the hearing | 9.12 a.m. / 9.57 a.m. | 22 listed for hearing today |
| Speaker, to Parliament, via Daily Mirror | 10.00 a.m. | 30 petitions, copies received |
| Hiru, as the hearing opened | 11.29 a.m. | ”about 25” submitted to the court |
Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told Parliament he had received copies of thirty petitions against the bill — in the same announcement in which he reported thirty against the Sri Lanka Cricket Bill. Hiru, filing from the court ninety minutes later, puts the figure at approximately twenty-five, using a hedging word rather than a firm count.
The three figures are not necessarily in conflict, and they are measuring at least two different things. The Speaker’s thirty is the number of petitions of which copies have been transmitted to him; the twenty-two was the number listed for hearing on Tuesday; and Hiru’s “about twenty-five” is an approximation of the number filed with the court. A petition can be filed without being listed, and the count transmitted to the Speaker can run ahead of the court’s list as late filings arrive.
No outlet reconciles them, and none states which number is the court’s own. Readers should treat twenty-two as the firm figure — it is the only one attributed to the hearing list, and it is the one two outlets gave independently — and the higher figures as indicating that further petitions exist beyond those listed.
Still not reported
Nothing published yet says what was argued on Tuesday, whether the Attorney General has responded, how long the hearing is expected to run, or when a determination will be delivered. The petitioners other than Ajith P. Perera and Udaya Gammanpila remain unnamed.
Update, 20 October evening: the arguments, and the count settled in open court
A fuller account of Tuesday’s hearing has been filed, by Hiru News at 8.17 p.m. It answers most of what the section above recorded as unreported: what was argued, who else is petitioning, and — from the Attorney General’s own counsel — how many petitions exist.
The count: 25, stated by the Attorney General’s counsel
Additional Solicitor General Nerin Pulle, appearing for the Attorney General, informed the court that twenty-five petitions have been filed challenging the bill, and that this had been reported to the Speaker’s office.
That supersedes the three-way split tabulated above, for a reason of standing rather than arithmetic: it is the only figure given to the court by the respondent’s own counsel, and it is the figure the Attorney General says was transmitted to the Speaker. The “twenty-two” was a hearing-list count, and Hiru’s earlier “about twenty-five” was an approximation that this filing now resolves to a firm number.
The Speaker’s thirty, reported to Parliament at 10 a.m., remains unexplained. No outlet reconciles it, and this desk notes that the same announcement gave thirty against the Sri Lanka Cricket Bill as well.
What the petitioners argued
Attorney Hijaz Hizbullah, appearing for several petitioners including the journalists F.M. Fazeer and Tharindu Uduwaragedara, made the submission that supplies the headline quotation:
“Through this bill the judicial power of the people is being restricted. Through that the sovereignty of the people is directly violated. Through this bill the magistrate has been made a mere ‘rubber stamp’.”
His specific objections:
- Bail requires the Attorney General’s consent. A magistrate can release a suspect only with the Attorney General’s concurrence — which, he argued, subordinates a judicial decision to the executive.
- Detention without a court order. Clauses 27 and 28 give the executive power to detain a person without any judicial order.
- Clause 59 confers arbitrary power on the President, in a manner he said is wholly contrary to Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution.
- Who may arrest. Under the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act only the police may arrest. The bill extends that power to the tri-forces and the Coast Guard. Where a police arrest follows the direction of a Superintendent of Police, he said, the bill gives the power of arrest to “anyone wearing a uniform.”
- Movement orders. The Secretary to the Ministry of Defence would be empowered to issue orders barring citizens from entering certain areas.
He asked the court to determine that the impugned clauses require a two-thirds majority and a referendum.
Ali Sabry, for G.L. Peiris, on what wrongful detention has already produced
President’s Counsel Ali Sabry, appearing for former minister Professor G.L. Peiris — a petitioner not previously named in this article — accepted the premise and attacked the safeguards. “Protecting the state is very important. There is no debate about that. But it is necessary that these Acts operate without violating the rights of innocent persons.”
His example was the Vavunathivu case. Before the Easter Sunday attacks, two police officers were killed in the Vavunathivu area and their firearms taken; two Tamil youths were arrested, detained, and confessions were obtained from them. After the Easter attacks it emerged that the killings had been committed by a group linked to the bombers. “Such things should not happen.”
He raised two further points:
- Two years of custody. The bill permits a person to be held in remand for a further year after a year of detention — which, he said, is contrary to the provisions of the Bail Act.
- Clause 51 and the right of assembly. If the executive decides that a meeting, a press conference or any activity is a threat to security, the bill empowers it to ban it. “That is extremely dangerous.”
Asked a question from the bench by the Chief Justice, Sabry said the power to make that decision should rest with a magistrate. His illustration was a protest near the Presidential Secretariat, where police reported the facts to a magistrate, obtained orders and resolved the matter — the course of events this archive recorded when a magistrate barred fifty-four people from the area around that building. “It is not appropriate to vest the power of taking such decisions in the executive.”
The Attorney General’s position, and Sumanthiran
Nerin Pulle told the court that the government does not intend through this bill to curtail freedom of expression in any way. That is the first reported response from the Attorney General on the merits, and it addresses the assembly and expression objections rather than the detention or bail ones.
President’s Counsel M.A. Sumanthiran, for several other petitioners, argued that the bill is “a further continuation of the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act” — the statute the PSTA is presented as replacing. Personal liberty is restricted under it, he said, and limiting judicial power is “extremely problematic,” amounting to a violation of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
What is now known, and what is not
Five petitioners are now identifiable: Ajith P. Perera, Udaya Gammanpila, G.L. Peiris, F.M. Fazeer and Tharindu Uduwaragedara. Twenty remain unnamed.
The clauses in dispute now span 26, 27, 28, 29, 51, 59, 60(3)(c), 60(7) and 68(2) across the reported petitions — note that Hizbullah’s submission adds Clause 59, and Sabry’s adds Clause 51, to the list this article carried this morning.
Still unreported: when the determination will be delivered, whether the hearing concluded on Tuesday or continues, and whether the Attorney General will respond on the detention, bail and arrest-power objections, which Tuesday’s reported submissions did not address.
Update, 21 October: the hearing runs a second day, and the Speaker’s count jumps again
The Supreme Court is hearing the petitions for a second day on Wednesday, Hiru News reported at 10.32 a.m., before the same three-judge bench. That answers the first of the questions left open above: the hearing did not conclude on Tuesday.
Hiru now gives the number of petitions as 25, stating it as a fact rather than an approximation. That matches the figure the Additional Solicitor General gave the court on Tuesday evening, and supersedes Hiru’s own earlier “about 25.”
A fifth number, from the same Speaker, six higher than yesterday
Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told Parliament on Wednesday that 36 petitions have been filed against the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, and 33 against the Sri Lanka Cricket Bill, the Daily Mirror reported at 10.36 a.m.
On Tuesday the same Speaker told the same House the figures were 30 and 30.
This is the most useful data point yet on the count, because it is the same official, reporting the same measure, on consecutive days — and it has moved. The PSTA figure rose by six and the cricket figure by three overnight. That is not a discrepancy between outlets; it is petitions continuing to arrive, which is the explanation this article could not confirm yesterday.
It also reframes the earlier numbers. Twenty-two was the Tuesday hearing list. Twenty-five was the count filed with the court as of Tuesday evening, per the Attorney General’s counsel. Thirty, then thirty-six, is the running total of petitions of which copies have reached the Speaker — a tally that can legitimately exceed the court’s list and that is still rising. The numbers are measuring different things at different moments, and the Speaker’s series is the only one so far observed to move.
What remains unexplained is why the Speaker’s figure ran ahead of the court’s on Tuesday rather than behind it.
Tuesday’s arguments, in fuller detail — and a correction to the rubber-stamp point
The Daily Mirror published a fuller account of Tuesday’s submissions at 11.17 a.m. on Wednesday. Note that it reports Tuesday’s hearing, not Wednesday’s — its own text says counsel made the submissions “yesterday.”
Its headline claim is one no Tuesday filing carried: counsel told the court the bill would curtail liberty so far as to be “far more dangerous than the Prevention of Terrorism Act” — the statute the PSTA is presented as replacing.
Three points sharpen or correct what this article recorded on Tuesday night.
The counsel’s own history. Attorney Hejaaz Hizbullah — whom Hiru rendered as “Hijaz Hizbullah” — appears for several petitioners including two journalists and several former detainees held under the PTA. The Daily Mirror notes that Hizbullah was himself incarcerated for 22 months under the PTA. Neither fact appeared in Tuesday’s reporting.
Clause 19, and who may arrest. This article reported from Hiru that the bill extends arrest powers to the tri-forces and the Coast Guard. The Daily Mirror supplies the clause and the baseline: under the existing law a person may be arrested by a police officer above the rank of Sub-Inspector, whereas Clause 19 empowers any police officer, along with members of the armed forces and Coast Guard officers, to search and arrest.
The “rubber stamp” attaches to discharge, not bail. This is a correction. Tuesday’s account, following Hiru, placed the rubber-stamp submission on bail requiring the Attorney General’s consent. The Daily Mirror attributes it to a different judicial act: Clause 37, which it says requires the Attorney General’s consent before a magistrate may discharge a suspect where there is insufficient evidence to proceed — effectively removing the discharge power and leaving the magistrate “a mere rubber stamp.”
The distinction is substantive. Bail is release pending trial; discharge ends the case. A magistrate who cannot discharge for want of evidence cannot stop a prosecution that should not continue.
Hizbullah grounded it in two cases in which magistrates did exactly that under the PTA: the discharge of former Inter-University Students’ Federation convener Wasantha Mudalige and of DIG Nalaka Silva.
Both submissions may have been made — counsel could have objected to the Attorney General’s consent being required for bail and for discharge — but only the Daily Mirror ties the quoted phrase to a clause number, and this article now follows it.
What is still open
No filing yet reports what was argued on Wednesday, whether the hearing will run beyond a second day, or when the determination will be delivered. The Attorney General has still not been reported responding on the detention, bail, discharge or arrest-power objections. Twenty of the twenty-five petitioners remain unnamed.
Correction: Parliament’s own record puts the Speaker’s PSTA baseline at 25, not 30
The analysis above derived the Speaker’s Wednesday figures from newspaper reports. Parliament has now published the announcement itself, and it states its own baselines. They do not match.
On the cricket bill the Speaker reported “three more petitions … in addition to the receipt of thirty Petitions mentioned in the announcement dated 20th of October 2026” — confirming thirty on Tuesday and thirty-three now.
On this bill he reported “eleven more petitions … in addition to the receipt of the twenty-five Petitions mentioned in the announcements dated 07th, 08th and 20th of October 2026.”
So the Speaker’s own PSTA series runs 25 → 36, a rise of eleven in a day, not 30 → 36. The figure of thirty appears nowhere in the primary record for this bill, and the reading above — that the PSTA count “rose by six” overnight — is withdrawn.
Two consequences follow. First, the twenty-five this article attributed to the Attorney General’s counsel on Tuesday evening is the same number as the Speaker’s own cumulative tally through 20 October. The two counts were never in conflict, and the question this article called unexplained — why the Speaker’s figure ran ahead of the court’s — rests on a thirty that the record does not support.
Second, the announcement dates show petitions against this bill have been arriving across at least three separate announcements since 7 October, so the accumulation is three weeks old rather than an overnight surge.
The same announcement also discloses, in a clause no newsroom reported, that the Speaker received a petition against the “Immigration” Bill. This desk has no other reporting on that challenge.
Where the newspaper accounts and Parliament’s record differ, this article now follows Parliament.
Update, 21 October: the UN human rights office’s assessment reaches a Sri Lankan newsroom — a week after it was written
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has told the government the bill reproduces and expands many of the failings of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, in a legal assessment that bears directly on the clauses now being argued in the Supreme Court.
A date caution belongs at the top of this section. NewsFirst filed on the assessment at 10.56 p.m. on 21 October, and its account carries no date for the document itself. The document is not new: it is a nineteen-page analysis dated 13 October, published by OHCHR the following day — its own file is named for 14 October — and Tamil Guardian reported it on 16 October, five days before the NewsFirst filing. Readers meeting the story this week should not take it as a fresh UN intervention.
This closes a question this archive left open. The 15 October report on Transparency International’s call for withdrawal recorded that a UN Human Rights Office comments document on the bill existed, was dated 14 October, could not be retrieved from this desk, and was therefore not described. Its contents are now reported by two verified newsrooms.
What OHCHR found
The office said the bill, gazetted on 22 September, “carries risks of continuation and recurrence of serious human rights violations observed recurrently under the existing PTA regime.” Its concerns, as Tamil Guardian reports them:
- Military arrest powers. The armed forces and Coast Guard could arrest and search suspects and hold them for up to 24 hours before handing them to police, with no express guarantee of access to a lawyer, a private medical examination or recorded questioning — raising “serious risks for potential abuse, including even of enforced disappearance.” The circumstances allowing military use of these powers could extend “well beyond isolated emergencies.”
- Administrative detention “remains central.” Detention orders could run two months at a time up to a total of a year, and a suspect arrested by the armed forces could be brought before a magistrate up to 72 hours after arrest.
- The definition of terrorism remains “overly broad and vague,” with protest, advocacy and dissent excluded only as an evidential caution rather than expressly.
- “Confidential information” is defined so that documenting checkpoints, military deployments, raids or arrests could be criminalised, putting journalists and human rights monitors at risk.
- Presidential proscription of organisations with no independent review and no time limit, and provisions keeping pending PTA cases alive after the PTA is repealed.
NewsFirst’s account sets out the remedies rather than the findings: a narrower definition confined to serious acts of violence committed with a terrorist purpose; judicial control over every arrest and detention regardless of whether the arrest is by police, armed forces or Coast Guard; judges empowered to review detention orders, grant bail and order release; confidential and timely access to counsel, independent medical examinations, family contact and oversight by the Human Rights Commission; inadmissibility of evidence obtained through torture, threats or unlawful detention; judicial warrants as the standard for searches, entry and seizure; the primacy of civilian policing, with any military role “genuinely exceptional, time-limited, under clear civilian authority”; narrower immunity clauses, so that officials cannot be shielded by a claim of good faith; and a meaningful public consultation before the bill proceeds.
One difference between the two accounts
Tamil Guardian reports that OHCHR found the bill “contains some improvements on earlier drafts.” NewsFirst’s account carries no positive finding at all — it reports the criticisms and the recommendations, and omits the acknowledgement that this draft improves on its predecessors. A reader of the NewsFirst filing alone would take the assessment as wholly adverse. The improvements matter to the argument in court, because the government’s defence of the bill rests on it being a reviewed replacement rather than a re-enactment.
How it maps onto the hearing
The assessment was written before the hearing opened, but it reaches several of the same clauses counsel has raised. OHCHR’s objection to arrest powers extending beyond the police is the point Hejaaz Hizbullah put to the court on Clause 19; its objection to executive detention without judicial order matches the submission on Clauses 27 and 28; and its finding on unreviewable presidential proscription sits alongside the Clause 59 argument. Its concern that the definition could criminalise documenting raids and arrests is the journalists’ objection. No filing reports whether any petitioner has placed the OHCHR assessment before the court.
Human Rights Watch, which said on 5 October that the bill retains abusive powers, has separately said it would breach the commitments Sri Lanka made to the European Union to retain its GSP+ trade concessions — the exposure this desk reported on 20 October.
Two more petitioners named, and a petition number
Tamil Guardian’s account of the hearing identifies a petition no Sri Lankan filing covered here has named. It was filed on 16 October by Udaya Kalupathirana and Hana Ibrahim, members of the executive committee of the Free Media Movement, and is numbered SC/SD/132/2026 — the first petition number this article has been able to record. Its respondents are the Attorney General, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara and Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala.
The FMM argues that Clauses 3(1), 3(2) and 9 define terrorism and “terrorist publications” so vaguely that journalists doing investigative reporting in the public interest could face life imprisonment and fines of up to Rs 20 million, and that Clause 15, which makes it an offence to fail to report information, gives no protection to confidential sources or whistleblowers. It also challenges Clauses 19, 20, 24 and 61, which confer search and arrest powers on the armed forces and allow the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence to declare prohibited areas.
That brings the identifiable petitioners to seven — Ajith P. Perera, Udaya Gammanpila, G.L. Peiris, F.M. Fazeer, Tharindu Uduwaragedara, Udaya Kalupathirana and Hana Ibrahim — leaving eighteen of the twenty-five unnamed. Tamil Guardian gives the count as “around 25,” consistent with the figure the Additional Solicitor General gave the court.
Still open
No account reports the government’s response to the OHCHR assessment, or whether the Justice Ministry has replied to it. Nothing yet says what was argued on Wednesday, when the determination will be delivered, or whether the hearing continues beyond a second day. OHCHR’s own document could not be retrieved from this desk on either of two attempts — it is served behind a bot check — so this section follows the two newsroom accounts of it rather than the text itself, and the page counts, dates and quotations above are theirs.