The All Ceylon Muslim Congress (ACMC) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) are preparing to contest the Jaffna as well as the Vanni electoral districts, under the ruling United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in the upcoming General Elections.

Abdul Risath Bathiyutheen, Minister of Resettlement and Disaster Relief Services speaking to the Asian Tribune said he has already contacted the UPFA leadership and told that he intends to nominate two Muslims to contest in the Jaffna Electoral district, and in the Vanni district he will be leading the UPFA team with four Muslims and five Tamil candidates.

Minister Bathiyutheen further said that in total, there are 30,000 Muslims registered as voters of the North and are living in the Puttalam refugee camps.

These were the people who were chased out of the North by LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhkaran in 1990, he said. These Muslims are now languishing in the Puttalam refugee camps and they are all registered voters of the Northern Province.

He said that he himself was a refugee living in Puttalam but contested and won a seat from Vanni in the 2004 parliamentary elections.

He said out of the 30,000 registered voters, 6000 are from Jaffna and the balance 24,000 is registered as voters of the Vanni electoral district.

In the meantime, Velmurugu Thangarajah, the SLFP Chief Organiser of the Jaffna district, said that they have decided to contest in the Jaffnaelectoral district under the ruling UPFA ticket. He said along with him he has decided to nominate the leading SLFP Party members of the district to contest from the Jaffnadistrict. - (Asian Tribune)