The High Court in Kuala Lumpur today dismissed an application by the Selangor government to cross-examine Election Commission chairperson Hashim Abdullah, before resuming the hearing of its judicial review application to challenge the redelineation exercise.

However Justice Azizul Azmi Adnan allowed a discovery application by the state government and ordered the EC to give information on the changes in locality (polling districts) of 136,272 dubious voters during the last two redelineation exercises performed in 2004 and 1993.

The judge said the main issue for determination was whether the delineation exercise was properly carried out as the voters in question do not have proper addresses.

"The EC said it does not have the records of the addresses, rather that the residency of the person can be ascertained without records kept by the EC.

"If the inquiry (or cross-examination) of the EC chief is allowed, he does not have the addresses. All he has are the records of the locality. The purpose of cross-examination would not be established in the hearing," ruled Justice Azizul.

The judge also did not allow four other Selangor discovery applications sought, which includes an application by the state for the EC to produce the data of all the voters from the beginning, which the court said would result in "crawling data".

The state had also urged the EC to produce the addresses of the 136,272 voters and the original documents they used to register themselves.

Exorcising 'phantom voters'

The Selangor government also requested the EC to produce minutes of its meeting to show how it implemented a 2012 recommendation by a Parliament Select Committee to clean up the electoral role.

These details were being sought to prevent the possible existence of "phantom voters" in these constituencies, which could be shifted anytime to other polling districts.

The Selangor government had wanted to cross-examine Hashim, following the presence of the 136,272 voters without proper addresses, as stated in the EC chairperson's affidavits.

Previously, the Selangor government had submitted evidence that there are there are 136,272 voters in Selangor without full addresses, according to the voters registry.

The state government cited the example of the Sabak Bernam parliamentary constituency, where about 15,000 voters or 38.59 percent of the total voters had incomplete addresses.

Ambiga Sreenevasan, the lead counsel for Selangor, submitted that this compromises the integrity of the voter registry and that it was open to abuse.

In its reply, the EC said these voter records had incomplete addresses after the voter registry was migrated to a computerised system in 2002.

Azmin hails ruling

When met after the ruling, Selangor Menteri Besar Azmin Ali hailed the decision to allow at least one of applications sought.

"This application which was allowed is also one of the important grounds, as we want to know how the EC changed the localities in the last two redelineations, which included these 136,272 dubious voters.

"This is an important and critical decision as we want to protect the rights of the existing voters," Azmin said.

In view of the court ruling, lawyers for both the state government and the EC have applied for a stay of the existing proceedings pending the appeal of today's decision before the Court of Appeal.

Ambiga said they have 30 days from today to file the appeal. Besides Ambiga the other lawyers were Latheefa Koya and Shahid Adli Kamarudin.

The EC was represented by Alice Loke, Amarjeet Singh and Azizan Md Arshad,

Justice Azizul vacated tomorrow's hearing of Selangor's main challenge on the redelineation by the EC, pending the appeal, and fixed April 11 for case management.