54.
| (1) Every person who directly or indirectly, by himself or by any other person on his behalf, makes use of or threatens to make use of any force, violence, or restraint, or inflicts or threatens to inflict, by himself or by any other person, any temporal or spiritual injury, damage, harm, or loss upon or against any person in order to induce or compel such person to vote or refrain from voting, or on account of such person having voted or refrained from voting at a Referendum, or who by abduction, duress, or any fraudulent device or contrivance impedes or prevents the free exercise of the franchise of any elector, or thereby compels, induces, or prevails upon any elector either to give or refrain from giving his vote at a Referendum shall be guilty of the offence of undue influence. |
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| (2) Every person who, at any time during the period commencing from the date of the publication of the Proclamation under section 2 and ending on the day following the date of the poll at such Referendum
| | (a) utters at any religious assembly any words for the purpose of influencing the result of such Referendum or inducing any elector to vote or refrain from voting in favour of or against the proposal at such Referendum; | | |
| | (b) for such purpose distributes or displays at any religious assembly, any handbill, placard, poster, drawing, notice, symbol, sign, flag or banner ; or | | |
| | (c) holds or causes to be held a public meeting at a place of worship for the purpose of promoting the Referendum or the Referendum campaign in favour of or against the proposal, | | |
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| (3) Any member or official of a religious order or organization
| | (a) who denies, or threatens to deny, to any member or adherent of that order or organization, or to any member of the family of such member or adherent, any spiritual ministration, service or benefit, to which such member or adherent would in the ordinary course have been entitled ; or | | |
| | (b) excludes, or threatens to exclude, such member or adherent from such order or organization, | | |
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| (4) Any person who, being the employer of any other person,
| | (a) terminates or threatens to terminate such employment ; or | | |
| | (b) denies or threatens to deny to such other person any benefit or service which such other person already enjoyed, or would have enjoyed, in the ordinary course of such employment. | | |
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Sri Lanka Consolidated Acts