Shamini Jayathilaka Dissanayake v. Sri Lanka Medical Council & Hon. Attorney General – SCFR 442/2019-2020

In the case between Shamini Jayathilaka Dissanayake (Plaintiff) and the Sri Lanka Medical Council along with the Hon. Attorney General (Defendants), the court addressed the legality of the Sri Lanka Medical Council’s (SLMC) imposition of a pre-entry qualification requirement on foreign medical graduates. The court held that the SLMC’s decision to deny the petitioner permission to sit for the ERPM, based on a requirement not rooted in statute, was arbitrary, ultra vires, and constituted a violation of the petitioner’s fundamental rights under Articles 12(1) and 14(1)(g) of the Constitution. The principle reaffirmed is that statutory rights conferred by parliamentary enactment cannot be curtailed by subordinate regulatory bodies. The decision was reached by analyzing Section 29(2) of the Med