PUTRAJAYA, Sept 24 ― DAP demanded today that the Registrar of Societies (RoS) proceed with the registration of its 120 new branches, which was previously put on hold pending the party’s court challenge against the authority.

Now that the case has been withdrawn, DAP national organising secretary Anthony Loke Siew Fook said the RoS must quickly move along with the process as there are now over 10,000 new party members who have yet to receive their memberships.

“Today, we ask RoS: what is the status of our branches? We have many more new branches in the pipeline,” Loke told reporters today.

Despite the withdrawal of the case, the RoS has continued to snub the DAP’s request to meet at the party’s headquarters here.

According to Loke, the numbers of pending new branches according to state are as follows: Kedah (4), Penang (29), Perak (29), Selangor (19), Federal Territories (4), Negri Sembilan (5), Malacca (2), Johor (15), Pahang (4), Sarawak (3), and Sabah (6).

“Our new members have joined DAP for more than a year, but they still do not have their membership status. This has affected DAP a lot,” added Loke.

Yesterday, DAP withdrew a judicial review filed against the RoS, after the regulator conceded that its refusal to recognise the party's central executive committee (CEC) was not legally enforceable.

DAP's lead counsel Gobind Singh Deo said the RoS agreed to the contention that the orders given in a December 6, 2013 letter issued to party secretary-general Lim Guan Eng did not amount to a legally binding directive.

On January 22, the DAP, through secretary-general Lim Guan Eng, filed for a judicial review to quash the decision by the RoS to withhold recognition of the party’s CEC pending completion of a probe into alleged complaints over the conduct of the party’s re-election.

The opposition party acceded to an earlier RoS directive to hold  fresh elections, following complaints by party members over the validity of the results of their initial polls in December 2012.

However, the RoS also refused to accept the outcome of last year’s party re-elections, again claiming that complaints were lodged over the conduct of the party polls, but allegedly did not furnish details of the complaints when requested by the DAP.

Loke today claimed that those who lodged the complaints are no longer members of DAP since they have formed a new competing party, the People’s Alternative Party (PAP).

“According to our party constitution, those who joined another party are no longer members of DAP,” he said.