Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Kuala Langat

On the court record

A district land administrator litigating compensation on compulsory acquisition under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 — including the mandatory-or-directory construction of the statute and claims for adjacent land not acquired.

Pentadbir Tanah Daerah Kuala Langat (the Kuala Langat District Land Administrator) is the land-administration officer for the Kuala Langat district, and it appears in the corpus as a respondent in land-reference proceedings over compensation for compulsory acquisition and in a title dispute. The matters are in the High Court, under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 and the National Land Code.

Compensation on compulsory acquisition is the dominant theme. In one land reference the court considered sections 38(2), (3) and (5) of the Land Acquisition Act 1960, and in particular whether the word "shall" in the provision was to be construed as mandatory or merely directory, a question that governed the court's jurisdiction to entertain the reference. This is a characteristic point in acquisition litigation, where the strictness of the statutory timetable and procedure determines whether a dissatisfied landowner's reference is properly before the court at all.

A recurring sub-question concerned adjacent land. In connected references the issue was whether the owner of adjacent land is allowed to claim compensation where that adjacent land is not itself required or acquired — the problem of injurious affection and severance, where the taking of one parcel affects the value or usability of a neighbouring parcel that the state has not taken. The authority also appeared in a Malay-language originating summons in which the plaintiffs, as new owners of two parcels said to have been bought from a since-deceased vendor in 1966, sought a declaration of ownership, while the vendor's heirs challenged the existence of the sale and purchase agreement, the original of which could not be located despite efforts to trace it. The Land Administrator's footprint is that of the district officer who fixes compensation and administers dealings in land, whose awards and the jurisdictional preconditions to challenging them are tested in references before the High Court.