Justice Azizul Azmi Adnan said the application to cross-examine EC chairman Mohd Hashim Abdullah would be a fruitless exercise because he would not have the necessary information.
“He (EC chairman) does not have the addresses of voters but only their locality (polling districts). So, the cross-examinaton will not establish anything,” he said in his oral judgment.
However, the judge allowed the state government’s application to provide information regarding the changes in locality of voters in the last two exercises – in 1993 and 2004.
Azizul said this was valuable information and might prove or disprove the state’s case.
All other requests made under the discovery application were dismissed.
Azizul later vacated tomorrow’s scheduled hearing as the state and the EC would be appealing his ruling at the Court of Appeal.
He fixed case management for April 11.
The Selangor government’s lead counsel, Ambiga Sreenevasan, said they had 30 days to file the appeal.
In early January, the state government and Menteri Besar Mohamed Azmin Ali filed an interlocutory discovery application to, among others, compel Hashim to take the stand to clarify an affidavit affirmed by him.
In the discovery application, the state government had asked that the EC produce the addresses of 136,272 voters and also the original documents used to register themselves as voters.
It also requested that the EC produce minutes of meetings, showing how the commission implemented a 2012 recommendation by a Parliamentary Select Committee to clean up the electoral rolls nationwide.
The EC was also asked to supply a computer software application, the Electoral Geographical Information System, used in the redelineation exercise in Selangor.
The state is requesting for this vital information as it fears “phantom voters” have been registered in several constituencies and that these “unidentified voters” could also be shifted any time to other polling districts.
Azmin had filed an affidavit in support of the discovery application.
In civil law, parties to an action cannot conduct a trial by ambush and as such the court can order key documents to be disclosed for the aggrieved party to substantiate its claims.
Selangor is seeking to nullify the EC’s notice of redelineation as it argues it violates the constitution in drawing its new electoral boundaries.
The Selangor government also wants a declaration that the notice is lacking in details and will cause voters, local authorities or the state government to be unable to exercise their constitutional right to file representations.
It wants the court to quash the EC’s notice and an order to direct it to publish a fresh notice on the proposed exercise.
The EC published an 18-page notice in major newspapers in September on the proposed redelineation in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah.