Who is Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena?

A schoolmate of Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Dinesh Gunawardena, has held various Cabinet posts in the past.

Dinesh Gunawardena, a hard-core Leftist leader whose family has a connection with India, became Sri Lanka's Prime Minister by a quirk of fate at a time when the country is grappling with unprecedented economic crisis and political turmoil.

A stalwart of Sri Lankan politics, Mr. Gunawardena was appointed as the Prime Minister on July 22, a day after Ranil Wickremesinghe was elevated to President's post. Mr. Gunawardena, 73, earlier served as the Foreign Minister and Education Minister. He was appointed as Home Minister in April by then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka crisis live updates | Ali Sabry takes charge as Foreign Affairs Minister; Dinesh Gunawardena takes oath as new Prime Minister

A schoolmate of President Wickremesinghe, Dinesh Gunawardena, has held various Cabinet posts in the past. Born in 1949, Mr. Gunawardena is the leader of the Trotskyist majority nationalist Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), a constituent party of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party.

Mr. Gunawardena belongs to a prominent political family in Sri Lanka and is a close ally of the Rajapaksa family, which ruled the country for nearly two decades. His father was a prominent figure in the Leftist socialist movement in the British era prior to the country's independence in 1948.

His elder brother Indika, who passed away in 2015, was born in Bombay in 1943 when his parents were in hiding in India as they had revolted against British rule. Indika was a Cabinet Minister from 1994 to 2001.