Cleared for a Simple Majority, Not Cleared of Doubt: What the Supreme Court Said About the Terrorism Bill

On 12 November 2026, while the country’s attention was on the Budget, Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne told Parliament the outcome of the Supreme Court’s review of the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill. According to the Daily Mirror, he announced that some of the Bill’s clauses were inconsistent with the Constitution, but that the Court had determined it could be passed by a simple majority if the necessary amendments were made at the Committee Stage.

This is the Bill the government presents as the replacement for the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), the 1979 law that successive governments used to detain people for long periods without charge, and that the NPP had long promised to repeal. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, the Ministry of Justice published the Bill in December 2025, and it allows detention without charge for up to one year.

What the Court decided

Ada Derana reported that a three-judge bench of Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena and Justices Achala Wengappuli and Sampath Abeykoon began hearing the petitions on 4 November, and that the petitioners, including the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, argued that parts of the Bill violated fundamental rights. The Speaker received the Court’s determination on 10 November.

According to Parliament’s published record of the Speaker’s announcements, and to the Financial Chronicle, the Court required four changes. Clause 26(2) must be amended so that a magistrate can authorise up to 24 more hours in police custody only on the application of the police officer concerned; the Financial Chronicle reported that the magistrate must give written reasons. Clause 59(5)(b) must refer to the Supreme Court instead of the Court of Appeal. Clause 60(7) must be removed. And Clause 66(1) must be reframed so that an executive order or direction made under the Act can be challenged in court through fundamental rights, writ and habeas corpus proceedings under Articles 126, 140 and 141 of the Constitution.

The Speaker said that the Additional Solicitor General had already undertaken to make three of these amendments, according to both the Daily Mirror and the Financial Chronicle.

Why a green light is not a clean bill of health

It is important to be clear about what this kind of ruling does. Under Article 121 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court checks whether a Bill is consistent with the Constitution and what majority it needs. It does not decide whether a law is wise, whether its definitions are too broad, or whether existing laws already do the job. Those are questions for Parliament, and for the public.

The required change to Clause 66(1) is telling. If the Court had to require that executive orders under the Act can be challenged through fundamental rights and habeas corpus cases, that suggests the Bill as drafted would have restricted such challenges. Habeas corpus, the right to ask a court whether a person is being lawfully held, is one of the oldest protections against arbitrary detention. That it needed the Supreme Court to secure it should worry anyone who has followed how the PTA was used.

Lanka Witness welcomes the Court’s amendments. But four changes do not answer the wider concerns that rights groups have raised. CIVICUS has reported the Bill’s provision for up to a year’s detention without charge. Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression monitor reported on 12 November that UN human rights experts had urged further revisions, including to the definition of terrorism, and that Free Media Movement activists had petitioned the Supreme Court, arguing that vague offences put investigative reporting and journalists’ confidential sources at risk.

Protests, concessions and the consensus promise

The ruling comes after a week of protest. The Columbia monitor reported that hundreds of people demonstrated in Colombo on 4 and 6 November against this Bill and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, in protests called by trade unions, the Frontline Socialist Party and the People’s Struggle Movement. Some protesters also called for the Online Safety Act to be repealed. The monitor reported that police obtained a court order restricting the 4 November protest, but that no force or arrests were reported.

According to the same report, on 5 November the President announced changes to the organised crime Bill, including cutting a 72-hour detention period to 48 hours, and said that neither Bill would be passed without consultation or broad consensus. The Opposition described the concessions as cosmetic. Lanka Witness examined those concessions in detail earlier this week.

The President’s promise of consultation and broad consensus is the standard by which the government should now be judged. A simple majority is easy for a government with the NPP’s numbers in Parliament. Broad consensus is not. It means taking seriously the concerns of the Bar Association, the media, the Human Rights Commission, Tamil and Muslim communities who suffered most under the PTA, and the UN experts, and not simply making the minimum changes the Court requires.

What Parliament should do now

First, the government should publish the full text of the Supreme Court’s determination, together with the full list of amendments it intends to move, before the Committee Stage begins. Citizens should not have to piece together what the Court said from short news reports.

Second, Parliament should not rush the Bill through while it is busy with the Budget debate, which runs until 14 December. A law that can deprive a person of liberty for a year without charge deserves its own full debate, not a slot squeezed between ministry votes.

Third, the government should answer the question it has not yet answered: why it needs a new counter-terrorism law at all, rather than simply repealing the PTA and relying on the ordinary criminal law with proper safeguards. That is what the NPP’s own supporters, and many of the people who voted for it, understood the promise to mean.

Under the PTA, people were held for months and sometimes years without trial, a record documented over decades by Sri Lankan and international rights groups. A government that came to power promising to end that history must make sure its replacement cannot be used the same way. The Supreme Court has done its part. The rest is up to Parliament.