LEE YAU PENG v 1. ) PENGARAH TANAH DAN GALIAN JOHOR 2. ) PENTADBIR TANAH DAERAH JOHOR BAHRU

Case Significance

Illustrates when time begins to run for judicial review, how multiple notices indicating an applicant's knowledge fix the start of that period, and the requirement of standing to challenge a Malay Reserved Land reservation decision.

This High Court decision at Johor Bahru concerns an application for judicial review to quash a state government decision reserving a lot of land as Malay Reserved Land, and it was determined principally on limitation. The applicant sought to challenge a decision of the Johor State Executive Council, recorded in a meeting summary dated in early 2017, by which the land in question was declared Malay Reserved Land, invoking Article 89 of the Federal Constitution concerning the declaration of Malay reservations, section 6 of the Johor Malay Reservations Enactment 1936, and Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012, and seeking prohibitory and declaratory relief. The applicant's asserted connection to the land was an application he had made in 2009 for the government land to be alienated to him, on which the district land office had noted only that there was an earlier application proposing the site be made a Malay reservation, with no decision recorded. The central questions were when time began to run for the purposes of judicial review and whether the applicant had standing. The court found that the applicant had received a notice to vacate the land from solicitors acting for the registered owner in December 2020, had entered a private caveat in January 2021, and had conducted a land search around that time which revealed the registration in the owner's name, so that he had knowledge of the matters he sought to challenge by late 2020 or early 2021; the application, filed in 2025, was therefore made well outside the time allowed under Order 53. The court further agreed with the State Legal Adviser that the applicant lacked standing because the land had not been alienated or granted to him, and it observed that he had in fact encroached on state land. On those grounds the court dismissed the application as filed out of time. The judgment is a useful illustration of when time begins to run for judicial review, the effect of multiple notices indicating knowledge on the part of an applicant, and the requirement of standing to challenge a land reservation decision.