Postal voting for presidential polls begins in Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sep 4 (PTI) The postal voting for the upcoming presidential elections in Sri Lanka began on Wednesday, with 700,000 registered voters set to cast ballot through posts.

The postal voting for the September 21 polls took place between 9 am and 4 pm at state institutions, mostly security forces camps, and would continue on Thursday and Friday.

The Election Commission has allocated additional days on September 11 and 12 for those voters who are unable to cast their votes on the initial dates.

Over 700,000 of the 17.1 million registered voters had applied to vote by post. These voters would be engaged in election duties on the polling day.

The first day of the postal voting went without any incidents, according to election monitoring groups.

Leading monitoring group, People’s Action for Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL), said they had seen 90 poll observers at Wednesday's postal voting.

Poll observers from the European Union and the Commonwealth Observer Group would also monitor the entire election process.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, main opposition challenger Sajith Premadasa and Marxist JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake are the front runners among the record 38 candidates in the race.

This will be the first election since Sri Lanka plunged into an economic crisis when the island nation declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022, its first since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. PTI CORR GRS GRS GRS