PUTRAJAYA: Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman can now argue before the Federal Court why he should be granted leave for a judicial review to challenge the government’s withdrawal of constituency funds from elected representatives.
This follows a unanimous decision by a three-member apex court bench granting him leave to appeal a Court of Appeal ruling.
Justice Nordin Hassan said the applicant, Syed Saddiq, raised three legal questions that crossed the threshold under Section 96 of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964.
Justices Lee Swee Seng and Collin Lawrence Sequerah were also on the bench hearing the application.
Leave for judicial review is granted only if the case raises novel constitutional or legal questions of public importance for the first time.
Syed Saddiq’s questions include whether a denial or withdrawal of constituency allocations is subject to judicial review, and whether such a withdrawal violates the principle of equality under Article 8(1) of the Federal Constitution.
The apex court will also determine whether Syed Saddiq’s challenge was filed outside the three-month limitation period following the decision by a public authority.
On Oct 27, 2025, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s refusal to grant Syed Saddiq leave for judicial review.
A three-member panel led by Justice Hashim Hamzah, now chief judge of Malaya, unanimously held that the judicial review application filed by Syed Saddiq and three others on April 23, 2024 was time-barred.
The panel agreed with the government’s position that the three-month period to challenge its decision expired on Dec 10, 2023.
On Dec 24, 2024, Chief Justice Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh, then a High Court judge, ruled that the court lacked the jurisdiction to hear the matter as the application was filed out of time.
Syed Saddiq and three Muar voters – Najib Abu Nawar, Bakirudin Abdullah, and Fadzly Bisri – filed the judicial review on April 23, 2024, naming the prime minister and the government as respondents.
They sought to quash the government’s decision to withhold RM500,000 from a RM1.7 million allocation for the Muar parliamentary service centre, which was meant to fund welfare, community, and disaster relief programmes.
The applicants also asked the court to reinstate Syed Saddiq’s access to the MyKHAS system, which manages a RM2 million development fund for the constituency, and to reverse the cancellation of several approved projects worth RM230,300.
They also challenged the government’s refusal to allocate funds for Syed Saddiq’s 2024 programmes under Projek Mesra Rakyat and similar initiatives.
Lawyers Lim Wei Jiet, Joshua Wu, and Nevyn Vinosh Venudran represented Syed Saddiq, while senior federal counsel Nurhafizza Azizan appeared for the respondents.
