Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Bentong

On the court record

Illustrates how the courts reassess compulsory-acquisition compensation, value partial acquisitions and severance in the context of major infrastructure such as the ECRL, and review the land authority's decisions.

The Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Bentong (the Land Administrator of the Bentong District) appears in this corpus exclusively as a respondent, and its reported matters, decided in the High Court, are almost entirely land references under the Land Acquisition Act 1960. Several of these arise from the compulsory acquisition of land for a major infrastructure project — the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) — where landowners dispute the adequacy of the compensation awarded by the Land Administrator (rujukan tanah — land reference; pampasan yang diawardkan tidak berpatutan — the compensation awarded is not reasonable) and refer the question to the High Court, which hears evidence, including from witnesses examined at the hearing, and reassesses the value of the land taken. Recurring points include the valuation of a partial acquisition and the compensation payable for severance and injurious affection where part of a holding is taken and the remainder is affected (pecah pisah — severance). The corpus also engages appeals against the grant of title or a decision of the State Authority under section 418 of the National Land Code, and applications for leave to bring judicial review subject to objections about the time within which the application was brought. Because the Land Administrator makes the initial award and administers the acquisition, the office is named as the respondent whose award and procedure are under scrutiny. The matters are decided in the High Court. Collectively the decisions in which the Bentong Land Administrator is a party illustrate how the courts reassess compulsory-acquisition compensation, value partial acquisitions and severance in the context of major infrastructure such as the ECRL, and review the land authority's decisions under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 and the National Land Code. Several of the reported matters also concern the evidence of value on which a reference turns, including the testimony of witnesses and the comparison of transactions relied on to fix compensation, and the approach to severance where only part of a holding is taken. Across these decisions the office appears as the statutory authority whose award and procedure the court reviews under the Land Acquisition Act 1960.