KUALA LUMPUR: The electoral roll is not defective even if it does not have the addresses of 136,272 voters in Selangor, the High Court was told.
Senior federal counsel Datuk Amarjeet Singh said the issue of the address of voters does not arise because even if there was a change in the boundary of polling districts, there was no alteration of locality.
Amarjeet, who appeared for the Election Commission (EC), was submitting in a judicial review application by the Selangor government against the notice and recommendations by the EC of its proposed redelineation exercise.
"The EC from time to time carries out alteration of polling district boundries which changes the composition of localities in a polling district or corrects the locality based on the voters actual location (address).
"In a situation of a change in the boundary of polling districts there is no alteration of a locality. The whole locality will either be inside or outside the altered boundary. No issue of address of voters arises in this situation," he said.
In his submissions, Amarjeet said the missing address arose when the EC carried out a migration exercise of information of registered voters from the manual system to a computerised system in 2002.
He said this was confirmed by the then EC chairman who was the person in charge of the exercise, Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman.
"Abdul Rashid stated that in the migration exercise only the locality of voters as at 2002 was retained," he said.
He also submitted that there was no evidence to show that the EC arbitrarily assigned voters without addresses to localities.
"The applicant's (Selangor government) grounds were based on presumptions but no hard evidence. The grounds raised by the applicant are without merit," Amarjeet said.
Lawyer Datuk S. Ambiga appeared for the state government.
Hearing continues before judge Azizul Azmi Adnan on Oct 24.
On Oct 19, the Selangor government, represented by its Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali, filed an application for a judicial review against the notice and recommendations by the EC of its proposed redelineation exercise.
He is seeking a declaration that the proposed redelineation, from a 2016 study by EC, was unconstitutional, inconsistent with Clauses 2(c) and 2(d) of Article 113(2) of the Thirteen Schedule of the Federal Constitution, and null and void.
Azmin, who is also Gombak Member of Parliament, is also seeking a declaration that the EC's failure to use the latest electoral roll in the redelineation was unconstitutional, not in accordance with Section 3 of the Thirteen Schedule of the Federal Constitution, and thus null and void.
Azmin filed the application on grounds that the EC had acted unconstitutionally, unreasonably and irrationally against Article 113(2) of the Federal Constitution.
He is also seeking, among other relief, a declaration that the published notice lacked details, where normal voters, local authorities or state governments cannot exercise their right to make a representation.