The Court of Appeal in Putrajaya today allowed the appeal by the attorney-general to set aside the leave (permission) previously granted to Lembah Pantai MP Nurul Izzah Anwar and 10 voters in their bid to challenge the present local inquiry on the redelineation exercise.

This came after a three-member bench led by Justice Umi Kalthum Abdul Majid found merit in the appeal.

“We unanimously allow the appeal by the attorney-general following the decision made by the High Court on Jan 3, this year (which granted the leave). There is merit in the appeal. The order by the High Court is set aside,” said Justice Umi Kalthum.

The other two judges were Justice Idrus Harun and Justice Hasnah Mohamed Hashim.

Earlier, the bench also dismissed the preliminary objection raised by Nurul Izzah's lawyers that the attorney-general should not be the one filing the appeal as the aggrieved party was the Election Commission (EC), not the Attorney-General's Chambers.

Nurul Izzah was represented by Malik Imtiaz Sarwar, Aliff Benjamin Suhaimi and A Surendra.

While the AG was represented by senior federal counsels Amarjeet Singh, Suzana Atan, Shamsul Bolhassan and Azizan Md Arshad.

With today's decision, there is still one more challenge remaining, namely the application by the Selangor government led by Menteri Besar Azmin Ali which is presently being heard on its merits at the High Court before Justice Azizul Azmi Adnan.

'Managed to paralyse redelineation'

Reacting to the setback, Nurul Izzah who was present accused the EC and the Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak of trying to cling on to power through the redelineation exercise.

"However, with this application we have managed to paralyse the redelineation in the Federal Territory. Together with Selangor's application, it has managed to bring a stop to the present exercise,” she added.

It was reported that the Kuala Lumpur High Court had granted leave to Nurul Izzah and the 10 voters on Jan 3. On Feb 3, Justice Azizul refused to grant a stay of proceeding in an application by the EC.

Surendra said today that they have agreed to drop two other matters, namely the recommendation and notice given by the EC, but not on the issue of local inquiry.

“However, the court found that the inquiry process was not a subject of the judicial review,” he said.

Nurul Izzah, 36, and 10 other registered voters in the Lembah Pantai parliamentary constituency had filed the application for judicial review on Nov 11 last year.

In the application, they demanded a certiorari order to quash the EC's notice dated Sept 15, 2016 on the proposed redelineation exercise for federal and state constituencies and the local inquiries.

Nurul Izzah had last month also questioned the hastiness of the appeal being heard at the Court of Appeal.