The High Court in Shah Alam has rejected former Bersih chairperson Maria Chin Abdullah's application for leave to file a judicial review against the Election Commission's (EC) final redelineation report which was tabled in Parliament on March 28.

High Court judge Azimah Omar ruled that Maria and 106 other applicants were not "adversely affected" by the outcome of the final report and thus have no standing to demand a local inquiry.

"The court finds that since the representation was made by improper persons, there is no necessity for EC to hold local inquiries and act on the representation...

"The 107 applicants were simply not in the constituencies in question.

"There are no reasons whatsoever which warrant this court to interfere with the Parliament's conduct or the Parliament's privilege," Justice Azimah ruled.

Her other grounds to dismiss the applications included that it has been rendered academic after the final report was passed in Parliament and received royal assent.  

Each applicant represented more than 100 voters who objected to the EC's second notice on its redelineation exercise for Selangor.

Former Dewan Rakyat speaker Pandikar Amin Mulia had on March 22, a day after the application for leave was filed in the High Court in Shah Alam, said the new boundaries would be tabled on March 28.

The applicants named the EC, Pandikar and caretaker prime minister Najib Abdul Razak as the three respondents in their application.

The 107 groups were seeking four court orders to be issued, including a declaration that the EC’s failure to hold local enquiries for objections to its redelineation exercise was “unconstitutional” and an order to compel the EC to hold local enquiries for the group.

They also wanted the courts to declare that the final redelineation report submitted by the EC to the prime minister on March 9 was unconstitutional, and to quash the report.

Additionally, they had applied for the courts to issue a stay order to freeze tabling, debating, discussing or voting on the EC’s redelineation report in the Dewan Rakyat until the lawsuit concluded.

The redelineation report was, however, tabled in Dewan Rakyat and approved with a simple majority.

Possible appeal

Counsel for the applicants Ambiga Sreenevasan later told reporters that they would consider filing an appeal against the decision, as well as mount a new challenge on the report, based on today’s judgement.

“All I am saying in simple terms is that the court ruled the 107 applicants have no right to demand the EC to hold local inquiries to hear their objections,” said Ambiga.

“What the EC has done is to deprive voters in the second proposal from making their objections.

“I have instructions to see whether we can challenge the final report on that basis,” she further explained.

Ambiga said while the EC’s second report on the redelineation exercise had taken into account complaints filed during the mandatory objection period, the final report submitted to caretaker prime minister Najib Abdul Razak had reverted to most of the original proposals.

In its second report, the EC proposed electoral boundary changes for Selangor involved only five parliamentary constituencies, down from the 18 proposed previously.

The first round of public enquiries for Selangor, which was for the EC's first proposal, was conducted from Dec 27 last year to Jan 9 this year, after being delayed for about a year due to court proceedings initiated by the Selangor government.