Pejabat Tanah dan Galian Negeri

On the court record

Illustrates how the courts resolve disputes over strata common property, protect Malay reservation land, supervise the caveat system, and review the land authority's decisions against its records under the National Land Code.

The Pejabat Tanah dan Galian Negeri (the State Land and Mines Office) appears in this corpus as a State land authority, most often as a respondent or defendant in disputes about the registration, administration and characterisation of land. The decisions turn on the National Land Code and related land legislation. A recurring subject is the characterisation of areas within a mixed strata development and whether particular areas are common property or fall to be treated otherwise, engaging the strata-title regime. Another concerns Malay reservation land and a declaration sought in respect of a gazette notification, where the special statutory protections attaching to such land are in issue. The corpus also includes the wrongful removal of a caveat (pemotongan kaveat secara salah — wrongful removal of a caveat) and a refusal to register a second caveat, and applications for judicial review challenging a decision of the Land Administrator, for example a refusal to vary a condition or entry. Procedural questions recur as well, including applications to strike out a statement of claim under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012. Because the Office's function is to maintain the register and administer dealings in land rather than to advance a commercial claim, it is characteristically named as the authority whose decision or record is in issue. The matters are decided in the High Court. Collectively the decisions in which the State Land and Mines Office is a party illustrate how the courts resolve disputes over strata common property, protect Malay reservation land, supervise the caveat system, and review the land authority's decisions against the records it maintains under the National Land Code. Several of the reported matters also concern the interaction between the district and State-level land authorities and the correct respondent where several offices administer the same dealing, and the remedies available to a proprietor aggrieved by a decision affecting title. Across these decisions the Office appears as the custodian of the register whose records must be reconciled with the court's determination of competing land interests.