Jaffna Electoral District was an

electoral district An electoral (congressional, legislative, etc.) district, sometimes called a constituency, riding, or ward, is a geographical portion of a political unit, such as a country, state or province, city, or administrative region, created to provi ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

between August 1947 and February 1989. The district was named after the city of

Jaffna Jaffna (, ; , ) is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka, Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a Jaffna Peninsula, peninsula of the same name. With a population o ...

Jaffna District Jaffna District ( ''Yāḻppāṇam Māvaṭṭam''; ''yāpanaya distrikkaya'') is one of the 25 districts of Sri Lanka, the second level administrative division of the country. The district is administered by a District Secretariat headed by a ...

, Northern Province. The 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka introduced the

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to any electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to political divisions (Political party, political parties) amon ...

electoral system for electing

members Member may refer to: * Military jury, referred to as "Members" in military jargon * Element (mathematics), an object that belongs to a mathematical set * In object-oriented programming, a member of a class ** Field (computer science), entries in ...

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

. The existing 160 mainly single-member electoral districts were replaced with 22

multi-member An electoral or voting system is a set of rules used to determine the results of an election. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, nonprofit organizations and inf ...

s. Jaffna electoral district was replaced by the Jaffna multi-member electoral district at the 1989 general elections, the first under the PR system, though Jaffna continues to be a polling division of the multi-member electoral district.

Members of Parliament

Key

Elections

1947 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 1st parliamentary election held between 23 August 1947 and 20 September 1947:

1952 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 2nd parliamentary election held between 24 May 1952 and 30 May 1952:

1956 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 3rd parliamentary election held between 5 April 1956 and 10 April 1956:

1960 (March) Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 4th parliamentary election held on 19 March 1960:

1960 (July) Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 5th parliamentary election held on 20 July 1960:

1965 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 6th parliamentary election held on 22 March 1965:

1970 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 7th parliamentary election held on 27 May 1970:

1977 Parliamentary General Election

Results of the 8th parliamentary election held on 21 July 1977: V. Yogeswaran and all other TULF MPs boycotted Parliament from the middle of 1983 for a number of reasons: they were under pressure from Sri Lankan Tamil militants not to stay in Parliament beyond their normal six-year term; the Sixth Amendment to the

Constitution of Sri Lanka The Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (, ) has been the constitution of the island nation of Sri Lanka since its original promulgation by the National State Assembly on 7 September 1978. it has been formally amended ...

required them to swear an oath unconditionally renouncing support for a separate state; and the

Black July Black July (; ) was an anti- Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 ...

riots in which up to 3,000 Tamils were murdered by Sinhalese mobs. After three months of absence, Yogeswaran forfeited his seat in Parliament on 22 October 1983.

References & footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jaffna Electoral District (1947-1989) Former electoral districts of Sri Lanka Politics of Jaffna District