SC petitions: Hoole goes his own way

All three Election Commission members have been forced to retain private lawyers to appear on their behalf in fundamental rights cases coming before the Supreme Court.

But one of them, S Rathnajeevan H Hoole, is said to retain his own counsel, while the other two are to be represented by two President' s Counsel.

This came after the Attorney General informed the Supreme

Court this week that he is not in a position to represent the Election Commission members in the cases where Commission members have been named as respondents.

This is not the first time Mr Hoole retained a private lawyer in the Supreme Court even though he is a member of an Independent Commission. In November 2018, he joined others in filing FR petitions challenging the dissolution of Parliament by former President Maithripala Sirisena while naming his two other colleagues in the Commission as respondents. He was represented then by Attorney- at- Law Hejaaz Hisbullah who was arrested last month by the Terrorist Investigations Department ( TID) over the Easter Sunday 2019 attacks. The lawyer’s family has maintained that his arrest was arbitrary and illegal.