From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

1931 Ceylonese State Council election

Election held in Ceylon

Field	Value
election_name	1st Ceylonese State Council election
country	British Ceylon
type	parliamentary
ongoing	no
previous_election	1924 Ceylonese Legislative Council election
previous_year	1924
next_election	1936 Ceylonese State Council election
next_year	1936
elected_members	1st State Council of Ceylon
seats_for_election	50 seats to the State Council of Ceylon
26 seats were needed for a majority
election_date	13–20 June 1931

26 seats were needed for a majority

The first election to the State Council of Ceylon were held from 13 to 20 June 1931. This was the first election in a British colony which used universal adult franchise.

Background

In 1931 the Donoughmore Constitution replaced the Legislative Council of Ceylon with the State Council of Ceylon as the legislature of British Ceylon. The State Council was to consist of 58 members of which 50 would be elected by universal suffrage and the remaining 8 members appointed the Governor.

The old Legislative Council was dissolved on 17 April 1931 and candidate nominations took place on 4 May 1931. The Jaffna Youth Congress, an organisation that campaigned for Ceylon independence, called for a boycott of the election since the Donoughmore Constitution did not grant dominion status to Ceylon. Consequently, no nominations were received in four constituencies in the north of the country (Jaffna, Kankesanthurai, Kayts and Point Pedro). In addition, nine other constituencies only had a single nomination each and consequently the candidates were elected without a vote. Elections in the remaining 37 constituencies took place between 13 and 20 June 1931.

In 1934 by-elections were held for the four vacant seats in the north.

Elected members

References

"Dates of Elections". [[Parliament of Sri Lanka]].
A. Jeyaratnam Wilson. (1975). "Electoral politics in an emergent state: the Ceylon general election of May 1970". Cambridge University Press.
K T Rajasingham. (22 September 2001). "Chapter 7: State Councils – elections and boycotts". Asia Times.
T.D.S.A.Dissanayake. "Chapter 1: Was early universal franchise a disaster?". Sangam.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

parliamentary-elections-in-sri-lanka 1931-elections-in-ceylon 1931-in-ceylon state-council-of-ceylon june-1931-in-asia 1931-elections-in-the-british-empire

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about 1931 Ceylonese State Council election — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report