Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak - who is suing Malaysiakini - today applied to strike out several paragraphs from the defence filed by the independent news portal.

This was disclosed by Malaysiakini ’s lawyer Ashok Kandiah ( below, left ) after the matter came up for case management in the High Court in Kuala Lumpur today.

However, it is not immediately known how many paragraphs or what issues Najib, who is also Umno president, wants struck out.

Najib and Umno's executive secretary, Abdul Rauf Yusof, had filed the suit over readers’ comments on two articles on the short-lived Terengganu menteri besar imbroglio.

The two articles are headlined 'A case of the PM reaping what it sows’ and 'How much will Najib spend to keep Terengganu'.

Previously, it was reported that the presiding judge Justice Kamaluddin Mohd Said was to continue hearing the case despite being transferred to the Seremban High Court.

Kandiah has sought an explanation on this from Chief Judge of Malaya Zulkefli Ahmad Makinuddin.

The High Court set May 6 to hear the application from Najib, who is represented by Nor Hazira Abu Haiyan.

Paragraphs disputed

Meanwhile, Bernama reports that Nor Hazira told reporters that the application of Najib and Rauf, filed on Jan 28, includes among others grounds that Malaysiakini 's counter-claim and defence were 'frivolous, vexatious and an abuse of the court process'.

They want the court to strike out more than 50 paragraphs from the news portal's counter-claim and statement of defence.

The prime minister filed the suit on May 30 last year in his personal capacity while Rauf did so on behalf of Umno.

They claimed that the defamatory words had tarnished Najib's reputation as a politician, Umno president and prime minister and that the comments implied sarcasm to indicate that Umno was incompetent.