The lawyer for the 10, Vasanthi Arumugam said High Court judge Wong Kian Kheong had allowed a temporary injunction pending resolution of the devotees’ civil suit against One City, the Selangor government, Sime UEP Properties, and the temple’s administrator.
“The temporary injunction comes into effect today and will be until Jan 11, 2019 pending the full injunction hearing.
“The developer has given an undertaking not to take any steps as regards the temple until disposal of the application for injunction is fully ventilated,” she said.
However, One City’s lawyer Brenda Chan disputed the devotees’ version that they had obtained a temporary injunction in the court.
She said One City only gave its undertaking not to proceed with the execution for land possession until the hering on Jan 11, 2019.
Lawyers for both the devotees and One City intend to seek a meeting with Wong tomorrow to get the judge’s clarification on the issuance of the temporary injunction.
The 10 devotees filed a suit this month to set aside a 2014 consent judgement entered by temple administrators and One City.
They claimed temple administrator K Chellappa and One City Development committed fraud in obtaining the consent judgment and all related agreements.
Earlier today, another High Court refused to allow three devotees from the temple to halt the consent judgment, that included the eviction.
Justice M Gunalan said the three individuals, namely S Thangarajoo, M Mohanakrishnan and S Nagarajah, failed to show why the eviction must not go on.
The judge also recused himself from hearing the suit by the 10 devotees on grounds that he may be prejudiced to their case as he had just dealt with a matter involving the same temple. The case was then heard by Justice Wong.
The temple was supposed to be relocated as part of a win-win court solution involving the developer One City, the Selangor government and two claimants to the temple management, K Chellappa and M Nagaraju.
The relocation was slated for Nov 22, but in an about-turn, Nagaraju insisted that the temple should remain at its present location instead of being relocated some 3km away.
Under the consent judgment in 2014, One City agreed to donate RM1.5 million for the construction of a new temple on one of two plots of land given by the company.
After the temple gave up the rights to one of these two plots of land, One City gave it another RM1 million in compensation.