Voters' suit against EC sent back to High Court

The Court of Appeal has reversed a High Court decision to reject a judicial review application brought by three Hulu Selangor voters against the Election Commission (EC).

The case would be remitted to the Kuala Lumpur High Court, which would hear the merits of P Maradeveran, Zahar Rusuli, and Yong Chan Hee's application to challenge the EC's locality correction exercise.

The exercise supposedly conducted under Section 7(2) of the Elections Act 1958 had purportedly moved Maradeveran and Zahar from the Batang Kali state constituency to the neighbouring Kuala Kubu Baru constituency. Yong, a Hulu Selangor local councillor and Kuala Kubu Baru voter, claims to have been adversely affected.

Pre-trial proceedings have been fixed for July 11, where a hearing date would be set. There were no orders as to cost.

The suit was originally filed by the three voters on Oct 21 last year, claiming that the EC had exceeded its powers under Section 7(2) by shifting voters across state constituency boundaries without their knowledge.

They claimed that the provision merely allowed the EC to shift voters between polling districts within a state constituency.

At the High Court, senior federal counsel Amarjeet Singh and Azizan Md Arshad contended that the applications were filed out of time, and was past the three-month period since the EC notified of the change by gazetting a notice on April 29 last year. Amarjeet repeated this assertion at the Court of Appeal today.

Time frame

In his decision on Jan 25 this year, Judicial Commissioner Azizul Azmi Adnan had dismissed the trio's application based on this objection.

However, the Court of Appeal today unanimously ruled that the clock should start on Aug 3 last year instead, when the EC wrote a letter to Maradeveran and Zahar.

The EC's letter explained to Maradeveran and Zahar that their constituencies had been moved because of the locality correction exercise, which purportedly found that their precise location of their addresses should be in Kuala Kubu Baru.

The decision was read out by Court of Appeal judge Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, who chaired the three-member panel. Others on the panel were judges Abdul Rahman Sebli and Zaleha Yusof.

Earlier today, the appellants' counsel Gobind Singh Deo had argued that the time limit prescribed under Order 53 Rule 3(6) of the Rules of High Court 2012 should start from the date of the EC's letter, not the date of the gazette.

This is because the gazette merely notifies that an exercise under Section 7(2) had been carried out, without specifying what changes it entailed, he said.

He said his clients could not have been aware of the EC's decision to change their constituencies under Section 7(2) - and therefore challenge the decision on grounds that the EC had exceeded its powers - until the EC had written the Aug 3 letter to them in response to their queries on why they were now in different constituencies.

Source: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/387250