Rajeev Amarasuriya to contest for post of BASL Presidency

Attorney-at-Law Rajeev Amarasuriya will contest for the post of President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) for the year 2025/2026, at the elections scheduled for February 2025.

Amarasuriya was elected Secretary of the BASL in February 2020 with a landslide majority having received 83% of the votes cast, and thereafter commenced his tenure in the midst of the first country lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Amarasuriya as Secretary of the BASL is credited for providing transformational leadership to the BASL during the period 2020–2022, which covered both the pandemic and the economic crisis, introducing many novel initiatives and completely changing the way the BASL conducted its operations, making use of new technology and other innovative methods.  

He is also credited for transforming the way the BASL conducted continuous Legal Education and Professional Development, by which the BASL successfully reached out to the entire membership irrespective of geographic location. He introduced the BASL Webinar Series conducted in all 3 languages and completed 175 Webinars with the support of over 500 lawyers as Resource Persons during these two years. These Webinars are to-date accessible publicly on the BASL YouTube Channel.   

He also introduced the BASL Online Certificate Courses, which benefitted approximately 2,000 members and generated the highest revenue for the BASL at the time from courses. Many other such successful initiatives were commenced during his tenure. Amarasuriya completed his primary and secondary education at Royal College, Colombo, where he was a Senior Prefect and the Editor of the College Magazine. Having obtained 4A’s with an Island Ranking at the Advanced Level Examination and the highest number of prizes at his last Royal College Prize Giving, he entered the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo in the 1997/1998 Batch and graduated obtaining 2nd Class Upper Division Honours. He thereafter entered the Sri Lanka Law College for his Final Bar Examination where he topped the Batch and received the Justice Siva Supramaniam Gold Medal among other prizes. Amarasuriya is also a Fellow Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (UK), a Chartered Global Management Accountant, a Fellow Member of the Institute of Certified Management Accounts of Sri Lanka and is an Alumnus of the Harvard Kennedy School (Executive Education). Amarasuriya is also the recipient of the CIMA Star Gold Award by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) as the most outstanding CIMA Member below the age of 40 years at the time in 2013 and as a CIMA – LMD Trailblazer in 2021.

Having dwelled in the Chambers of Dr. K. Kanag-Isvaran, PC and Sanjeeva Jayawardena, PC, and thereafter having worked as a Junior Counsel to Sanjeeva Jayawardena, PC for a decade until 2013, Amarasuriya is now an independent practitioner engaged in the areas of Public Law and most branches of Civil Litigation before the Appellate Courts.