The council was dissolved in 1974 and administered by special commissioners until 1983 when local elections were held.

[3] The following were some of the city's commissioners and secretaries:[3] Results of the local government election held on 18 May 1983:[4] All members of the council resigned one month after being sworn in.

[3] Batticaloa didn't have an elected local government for sporadic periods, this was due to various reasons.

[5] Aljazeera, the Asiafoundation and the Daily Mirror attribute this to civil war;[6][7] Reuters and the US State Department attribute this to calls for election boycotts by the LTTE (enforced with brutal reprisals for non-compliance)[8][9] and the Tamilnet attribute it to The Sri Lankan government's suspension of all local government in the north and east of the country in 1983 using Emergency Regulations.

[13] Edwin Silva Krishnanandaraja of UPFA-TMVP resigned as a member of BMC and was replaced by Selvarasa Sasikumar.

[15] R. Thurairatnam (Ind 1-EPRLF) resigned to contest the Eastern provincial council elections.