Surendra Ananth

On the court record

Surendra Ananth appears in the reported corpus as constitutional and administrative-law counsel, with judicial review and freedom-of-expression matters prominent. At the Federal Court he was engaged in a landmark free-speech reference concerning section 233(1)(a) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, where the court examined Article 10(1)(a) and Article 10(2)(a) of the Federal Constitution, the words "offensive" and "annoy", the presumption of constitutionality, the technique of reading down and the avoidance of vagueness. He also appeared in a Federal Court administrative-law appeal challenging the validity of a fatwa, which asked whether a religious edict could lawfully apply to a company limited by guarantee — an artificial legal person — and to non-Muslim individuals.

His judicial-review practice at first instance is broad. In a challenge to university student-discipline proceedings he relied on the Universities and University Colleges Act 1971 and the relevant student-discipline rules, framed as a semakan kehakiman (judicial review) of a decision over the alleged possession of unauthorised notes in an examination. Other reported matters include a judicial review to quash the termination of an appointment as dean of a medical faculty, where the court considered legitimate expectation and the absence of mala fide; an application to strike out a writ under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012; a stay application pending judicial review of a municipal council's move to demolish a guard house and boom gate, refused for want of special circumstances; and a stay of proceedings pending arbitration where the issue was whether an agreement to mediate in court amounted to a waiver of the right to arbitrate. The reported decisions establish him as counsel focused on public law, constitutional rights and the supervisory jurisdiction of the courts. In the fatwa appeal the court's concern extended to whether the edict was valid as a whole, given that it purported to suggest that certain federal authorities take specific action against the appellants, and whether such an edict could lawfully bind a company limited by guarantee and non-Muslim individuals who were not its intended subjects.