Sri Lankan Parliamentary elections to be held on April 8 - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Sri Lanka parliamentary elections will be held on Thursday, two months ahead of schedule to select 196 members of the parliament from 22 districts. The other 29 will be chosen from the national lists of political parties and independent groups, based on the national volumes of votes they received in the parliamentary election. The newly elected parliament will convene on April 22 for the inaugural session. The current parliament was elected in 2004 completes its six-year term by April 22. Meanwhile, President Mahinda Rajapakse looks set to consolidate his hold on power in parliamentary elections. Rajapakse called Thursday's vote after his thumping re-election in January and his Freedom Alliance party is in line for an easy majority in the 225-member national legislature. The opposition, which united behind a common candidate, former army chief Sarath Fonseka, for the presidential poll, has now split, giving Rajapakse's party a clearer run in the election. Fonseka is now under detention and faces another hearing in an ongoing court martial process on Tuesday that could see him jailed for years for allegedly engaging in politics while in uniform and making illegal army procurements. Rajapakse and Fonseka were close allies in the defeat of Sri Lanka 's Tamil Tiger separatists last year, which ended their 37-year violent struggle for a homeland for ethnic Tamils in the north and east of the island nation. At the January presidential poll, Rajapakse won the votes of most of the Sinhalese ethnic group, to which he belongs, but lost out in all Tamil areas to Fonseka.