Although a member of the civil service and as such required to be politically neutral , Dias was a silent strategist uniting the all the local Buddhist chapters ( Nikayas ) under the Eksath Bhikku Peramuna and helped forged the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna , a four-party coalition with a no-contest pact with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka , lead by Bandaranaike . Mahajana Eksath Peramuna won a landslide victory in the 1956 general elections , defeating the United National Party and paving the way for Bandaranaike to become Prime Minister . In the years that followed , he became disappointed in Bandaranaike for his limited nationalist reforms . Following the Bandaranaike assassination , and a brief period of political turmoil , his widow Sirimavo Bandaranaike took over his party and carried forward his nationalist polices and socialist reforms , having become the first female Prime Minister in the world . Dias had become the informal chief adviser to Bandaranaike . As a result he was on the list of government officials to be arrested during the attempted military coup in 1962
Bandaranaike assassination
Assassination of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike
N. Q. Dias