The North-East Province was formally de-merged into the Northern and Eastern provinces on 1 January 2007. On 16 October 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that the proclamations issued by President Jayewardene were null and void and had no legal effect. On 14 July 2006, after a long campaign against the merger, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna political party filed three separate petitions with the Supreme Court requesting a separate provincial council for the East. The thought of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam controlling this province, directly or indirectly, alarmed them greatly. The combined North-East Province occupied one fourth of Sri Lanka. The merger was bitterly opposed by Sri Lankan nationalists. However, the referendum was never held and successive Sri Lankan presidents issued proclamations annually extending the life of the 'temporary' entity. The proclamations were only meant to be a temporary measure until a referendum was held in the Eastern Province on a permanent merger between the two provinces. On September 2 President Jayewardene issued proclamations enabling the Northern and Eastern provinces to be one administrative unit administered by one elected Council. On 14 November 1987 the Sri Lankan Parliament passed the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka and the Provincial Councils Act No 42 of 1987, establishing provincial councils. Crucially, the accord allowed the Sri Lankan president to postpone the referendum at his discretion. The accord required a referendum to be held by 31 December 1988 in the Eastern Province to decide whether the merger should be permanent. The Indo-Lanka Accord signed on 29 July 1987 required the Sri Lankan government to devolve powers to the provinces and, in the interim, to merge the Northern and Eastern provinces into one administrative unit. Nuvarakalaviya was transferred to the newly created North Central Province in 1873. The districts of Jaffna, Mannar, Nuvarakalaviya (present day Anuradhapura District) and Vanni formed the new Northern Province. In 1833, in accordance with the recommendations of the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission, the ethnic based administrative structures were unified into a single administration divided into five geographic provinces. The Northern Province was part of the Tamil administration. They divided the island into three ethnic based administrative structures: Low Country Sinhalese, Kandyan Sinhalese and Tamil. In 1815 the British gained control of the entire island of Ceylon. The province then came under Portuguese, Dutch and British control. Other parts were ruled by Vanniar Chieftains who paid tribute to the Jaffna kingdom. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to the modern Maritime Silk Road.Parts of present-day Northern Province were part of the pre-colonial Jaffna kingdom. It has a rich cultural heritage and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the PДЃli Canon, date back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. Sri Lanka's documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo. The island is historically and culturally intertwined with the Indian subcontinent, but is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka (, а·Ѓа·ЉвЂЌа¶»а·“ а¶Ѕа¶‚а¶ља·Џ ' а®‡а®Іа®™аЇЌа®•аЇ€ Ilaб№…kai), officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka''', is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea.

Sri lanka map vavuniya