The Experts’ Committee of the APRC produces 4 reports including a ‘majority report’ of 11 members and a ‘minority report’ of four members.
The 37-page ‘majority report’ recommends inter alia maximum devolution of power, with the province as the unit of devolution. It stated that although the country was multi-ethnic and multi-religious, the crisis had arisen because the numerically smaller ethnic groups had not had their due share of state power: "This has resulted in the minorities being sidelined and becoming alienated from the Sri Lankan state, as initial efforts to redeem this situation by a power-sharing mechanism failed".
The group recommended that the name of the state be "The Republic of Sri Lanka." It recommended that in the Constitution it be termed "one, free, sovereign and independent State," and the use of distinctive expressions, such as unitary, federal, union of regions/provinces, among others, be avoided. Instead reference could be made to the state as consisting of "institutions of the Centre and of the provinces, which shall exercise power in the manner provided for in the Constitution."
The group recommended a single North-East province with two internally autonomous units to address the concerns of the Muslim and Sinhalese populations: "In such an arrangement, the Muslim-majority unit will comprise Kalmunai, Sammanthurai and the Pottuvil polling divisions as the base together with non-contiguous Muslim-majority Divisional Secretary’s Divisions in the North-East. The Sinhala-majority unit will comprise Ampara polling division together with non-contiguous Sinhala-majority Divisional Secretary’s Divisions in the North-East".
Source
Devolution proposal in Sri Lanka, The Hindu, 7 December 2006.
