13வது திருத்தம் — செயல்படுத்தப்படாமைThirteenth Amendment & Provincial Council non-implementation
The 13th Amendment, enacted in 1987 as the constitutional output of the Indo-Lanka Accord, established Provincial Councils with devolved powers over land and police. Neither power has been devolved in the Northern Province in the forty years since.
13A is the longest-running non-implementation in the post-independence record. It is also the floor below which no negotiated settlement has gone. The case file records the gap between 13A as written and 13A as implemented as the operational measure of the unitary state's willingness to share power.
§1What 13A says and what is delivered
13A devolves land and police powers to Provincial Councils, subject to a National Land Commission and a National Police Commission. The National Land Commission has never been constituted. Police powers have not been transferred to the Northern Provincial Council. Successive central governments have either retained powers, withheld budgets, or — under the 20th Amendment — recentralised authority.
This article tracks the institutional non-performance only; it does not advocate any particular constitutional outcome.