The presidential election in Sri Lanka has gone into the second round of counting as no candidate secured the required 50 percent vote in the first round. The Election Commission has said that all candidates except the top two are eliminated, and 2nd and 3rd preference votes from other candidates will be redistributed among the two. The candidate with the highest votes will be declared victorious.

Voting for the presidential election was held yesterday in what is being termed by the Election Commission as the most peaceful election in the island’s history. As per the results shared by the Election Commission, the leftist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake is ahead with 41 percent votes, while Sajith Premadasa trails at 33 percent. The incumbent President Ranil Wickremasinghe, who contested as an independent, came a distant third with 17 percent of the of the votes.