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voting in Parliament. Further he contended that the marginal
note and the wording of the Article and its contents all
make this clear. According to Mr. Choksy “such matters" as
contained in Article 101 (1) is clearly a reference to the matters
covered by Article 101(1) only and the Parliament passed the
necessary laws to provide for such matters when it enacted
the Registration of Electors Act, No. 44 of 1980 and the
Parliamentary Elections Act, No. 1 of 1981.
With regard to this submission of Mr. Choksy, it would
appear that to place such a restriction on the operation of
Article 101(1) would be to do violence to the intention of the
framers of the Constitution., As stated above the necessary law
to cover both points of time, namely, at the time of election or
at the time of sitting and voting have to be made in terms of
Article 101(1) and more specifically in terms of Article 101 ( l)(i).
This was the view expressed by the Supreme Court in the case
of Dahanayake vs. De Silvafsupra) in relation to the 1972
Constitution, where it was stated very clearly that Section 73(f)
of the 1972 Constitution was the empowering provision to
create the law for the purpose of disqualification contemplated
by Section 70(l)(d). It should be noted that sitting and voting
is a necessary or incidental consequence to the election of
members to the National State Assembly or to the Parliament.
In addition in that case, the argument advanced by Counsel to
place a restriction with regard to the operation of Section 73 to
procedural matters as opposed to the creation of necessary
substantive law was rejected. The Court in that case accepted
the position that two of the items in respect of which laws can
be made by the National State Assembly was section 73(e) the
grounds for avoiding elections, and section 73(f) such other
matters as are necessary or incidental to the election of
members to the National State Assembly: Provided, however,
that a law made under this section shall not add to the
disqualifications enumerated in Section 70. Therefore on the
strength of this reasoning by the Supreme Court, we are of the
view that it would not be correct to place the restriction as
suggested by Mr. Choksy on Article 101(1) namely that it deals