KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1 — DAP MP Tony Pua won leave for his legal challenge against the Immigration Department's travel ban against him, lawyer Gobind Singh Deo said today.

Gobind said the case management date has been fixed for October 15, with the Immigration Department's director-general and government of Malaysia to file a response to Pua's judicial review bid.

"After the response is filed, the court will fix a hearing date to hear the merits of the application," he told reporters after a brief hearing in chambers before High Court judge Datuk Asmabi Mohamad.

Senior federal counsel Shamsul Bolhassan confirmed that no objection to the application for leave for judicial review was raised during the hearing.

Pua, who named the Immigration Department's director-general and government of Malaysia as respondents, is seeking for the courts to declare his travel ban unlawful and to quash it.

On August 19, Pua filed for judicial review of the Immigration Department's July 22 to block him from leaving the country, saying the agency had acted outside its discretionary powers by putting him on a travel blacklist.

Pua said he had only found out about the travel ban when he was stopped by the Immigration Department at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 in Sepang when trying to board a July 22 flight for Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

The passport issued to Pua is valid for about five more years and will only expire on April 23, 2020.

Gobind had previously said that the travel ban infringed on Pua’s constitutional rights as a valid passport holder, noting that it was imposed without prior notice and without giving his client the opportunity to defend himself.

The Immigration Department's director-general did not provide a response to a July 24 letter seeking for reasons behind the travel ban on Pua, Gobind had said.

In a separate incident on September 23, Pua was deported from Miri, Sarawak in the afternoon after the state's Immigration Department had "mistakenly" allowed him to enter the state the same morning.

Pua had said no reason was given for his deportation, but local daily Utusan Malaysia claimed the next day that an unnamed Sarawak state government source had said that his name was recently blacklisted due to several matters including the DAP leader's accusations against 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

Pua is a member of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that had been investigating 1MDB until its inquiry was disrupted by Putrajaya.

On September 24, Sarawak DAP said a legal team will be formed to initiate a judicial review to challenge the legality of the state's entry ban on Pua, which he claimed had not been based on proper policy consideration.

Gobind confirmed today that plans for legal action against the Sarawak entry ban have yet to be finalised.