Speaking at a media briefing held at the Election Commission yesterday, the election chief requested all media institutions to be imbalanced in their coverage of the elections. "We call on all media outlets, especially state media institutions to be neutral and not to show impartiality. Not only they should be impartial, they need to show impartiality to convince the people," he said reiterating the responsibility to act neutral.

"If not we will take legal action against state media. For private media we remind that the frequencies belong to people, from people to the government. Those are limited and temporarily leased to private media. Private media too is bound to use them fairly. Therefore use fairly," the Election Commission Chairman cautioned.The Chairman of the Election Commission stressed the need for a security program until postal ballot papers are received by voters.
He said more than 600,000 postal votes were issued in Sri Lanka and those are now at the Post Offices of the Department of Post. From Monday the packages containing the postal ballots will be delivered by post to the respective government offices, police, military camps and SLTB depots.The Election Commission Chairman requested all Certification Officers, Heads of Institutions, and Post Masters to make arrangements to ensure that the ballot papers are delivered to the certification officer safely.
"These must be kept safe unopened until the 31st of October when the postal vote is due. They should be opened only in the presence of the postal voter. It is the responsibility of all the Postal Voting Certification Officers and their respective heads of institutions to make a safe arrangement in this regard," said the Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya.