Sri Lanka’s Seventh Presidential Election to Commence today

Sri Lanka Presidential Election - 2015

Voting for the presidential elections will commence at 7 a.m. today (08), and will conclude at 4 p.m. with 15,044,490 voters.

There are 19 candidates in the fray, including incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa from the UPFA and former SLFP General Secretary, former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena from the New Democratic Front.

There are 12,314 polling stations in the 22 administrative districts. Ballot boxes were sent to respective polling stations from main counting centres countrywide yesterday under heavy security.

Deshapriya said that there were 303 postal vote counting centres and 1,109 main counting centres set up in 44 places countrywide.

More than 70,000 policemen would be on duty for the Presidential Election, the Polls Chief said, adding that the army would be deployed if necessary and security had been tightened in several areas where violent incidents had been reported.

Local election monitors including the People’s Action for Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL), Campaign for Free and Fair Election (CaFEE) and Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) and foreign observers, including Commonwealth Election Monitors will observe today’s election.

The counting of vote would commence at 6.00pm today and it is expected to release first postal voting result after 10pm.

(Government News Portal)