THE Court of Appeal today overturned an earlier High Court order stopping the Election Commission (EC) from submitting its report on the redrawing of electoral constituencies to the prime minister.

In July, the High Court ruled in favour of the Selangor government, which applied to block the EC from submitting its current report as the final one until the end of an ongoing court challenge by the Selangor government.

The EC had appealed against the High Court decision.

“The appeal is accepted. We are putting aside the decision of the High Court,” High Court judge Umi Kalthum Abdul Majid said today.

However, the three-person panel, which includes Azmadi Asnawi and Suraya Othman, did not reveal why the earlier ruling was overturned unanimously.

Earlier today, the court turned down a request by the Selangor government for the disqualification of Umi Kalthum from the panel of judges on the grounds of possible bias as she had previously presided over a related case.

Government lawyer Amarjeet Singh had earlier said that the High Court injunction impeded the EC from carrying out its duties as it could not conduct local enquiries for its second round of review of electoral seats in peninsular Malaysia until the end of the Selangor government’s court challenge.

“They (EC) are denied from carrying out their constitutional responsibilities,” he said.

Critics such as DAP’s election strategist Dr Ong Kian Ming said the delimitation exercise is an attempt by Barisan Nasional to win more federal seats by reducing the number of mixed seats.

Selangor government lawyer Cyrus Das said argued that, should the prime minister release the report in Parliament, the courts will no longer be able to award the injunction to the state.

On September 15, the EC had published its first notice to inform the public of its first round of the redelineation exercise, which the Selangor government challenged as unconstitutional and illegal.

On December 16 last year, the High Court had ordered the EC not to carry out local enquiries in Selangor until the end of the court case.

But on March 8, the election regulator went ahead and issued a second notice to proceed without Selangor in the second round of its redelineation exercise.

The EC report is a crucial part of the entire redelineation process, as the report submitted to the prime minister will be tabled in Parliament for approval and then passed to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong before changes, such as the redrawing of electoral boundaries, are officially done.

According to the EC’s court documents, the first round of local enquiries for all affected states except Selangor had been completed between October 31, 2016, and February 28, 2017, with 425 objections heard.

With the exception of Malacca, where local enquiries have been halted by a court order, and Selangor, the second round of local enquiries for all affected states were undertaken by the EC between April 17 and May 24  with 109 objections heard. – October 30, 2017.