Update, 13 November: the deadline reported here has moved. The Welfare Benefits Board extended the appeals and objections window by four days to 15 November, with submissions from 12 November onwards accepted online only. See Aswesuma appeal deadline pushed to 15 November.
Appeals against the revised Aswesuma beneficiary list must be submitted by Wednesday, 11 November, the Welfare Benefits Board has confirmed. Around 991,800 people have qualified under the revised list, with a further 265,315 earlier beneficiaries continuing to receive payments.
Where appeals go, and by when
Board chairman Nimal Kotawelagedara told NewsFirst in an interview published on Saturday that appeals must be handed to the respective Divisional Secretariats, because Divisional Secretaries chair the relevant appeals committees. He said the law allows a ten-day period for appeals, with the deadline set at 11 November.
The Island reported on 31 October that the window runs from 29 October to 11 November under Section 11 of the Welfare Benefits Act, and that 1,391,830 applicants found ineligible are entitled to appeal.
The numbers
Approximately 991,800 people have been identified as eligible under the revised list — the same total this desk reported when the list was first published on 28 October. Kotawelagedara added a figure not previously published: a further 265,315 individuals selected earlier will also continue receiving the allowance.
A separate list covering roughly 700,000 people selected through preliminary assessments is still awaiting approval. Once cleared, the names of those identified under the extremely poor and poor categories will also be published.
Two dates that are easily confused
Kotawelagedara said the board expects to release the revised beneficiary list on 27 November, with payments to selected beneficiaries beginning during the final week of November. NewsFirst’s own headline renders this as payments “from November 27”.
This desk’s earlier reporting described 27 November as the date disbursements begin. The two framings are compatible — 27 November falls in the final week of the month — but the board’s latest wording puts the list’s publication on that date and the payments in the days around it, rather than fixing payments to the 27th itself.
What happens to those who lost benefits
Addressing concerns about people cut from the programme, Kotawelagedara said an empowerment programme is already running through the Samurdhi Department, and that the Welfare Benefits Board holds a separate Memorandum of Understanding with that department allowing it to refer identified individuals for assistance.
He said the board also intends to propose extending those empowerment initiatives to people classified under the vulnerable and transitional categories, in addition to those in the extremely poor and poor categories. Cash transfers to the transitional category ended in April 2025, and the vulnerable category was discontinued in June 2026.
Update — 10 November: deadline holds, second list dated to December
On Tuesday evening the board restated that the appeals and objections window closes on Wednesday, 11 November, with no extension, Hiru News reported. Kotawelagedara said appeals are open to applicants who did not qualify, and to those dissatisfied with the benefit category they were placed in — a distinction the earlier filings did not spell out.
He also gave the first date for the pending list: the second list of qualified beneficiaries will be published next month, once scheme information has been updated. That is the roughly 700,000 names described above as awaiting approval, and it places them in December rather than November. It does not displace the 27 November date, which refers to the already-revised list.
One discrepancy is worth recording. Hiru reports that 991,800 families qualified under the extremely poor and poor categories, where the NewsFirst interview gave 991,800 as a count of people. This desk’s 13 October report counted 985,283 families, which suggests the unit here is households rather than individuals. The sources do not resolve it, and the figure should be read with that caveat.
NewsFirst spells the chairman’s name Kotawelagedara; earlier filings by EconomyNext and Daily FT spell it Kotawalagedara, as does Hiru’s Sinhala rendering. This report uses the spelling in the source interview.
