KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 23 — The High Court in Kuantan has dismissed two leave applications for judicial review from a group of durian farmers against the Pahang state government’s “legalisation scheme” for lack of legal standing.
“The court is of the opinion that the farmers are trespassers of the said land, so they do not have the locus standi to file the challenge,” News portal Malaysiakini reported the farmers’ lawyer Siew Choon Jern saying in a press conference live-streamed from outside the court.
The report also quoted DAP's Tras assemblyman Chow Yu Hui as saying the farmers were disappointed by the court ruling today and would appeal.
Malaysiakini reported that the two judicial review applications were filed separately by a total of 200 Raub durian farmers in August and October this year, based on almost the same set of facts and arguments.
The land dispute in Raub made headlines this year after the state government sought to reclaim the land occupied by the farmers for large scale cultivation of Malaysia’s iconic Musang King durian variety.
The farmers cried foul, accusing the state authorities of unfair treatment in removing them from the lands they had been cultivating for decades now that the Musang King durian industry has become a money spinner.
However, Royal Pahang Durian Resources PKPP Sdn Bhd, the private company empowered by the Pahang government to engage with the farmers in a land legalisation scheme, insists it is offering a fair trade deal that will enable the planters to gain a decent profit.
The dispute then escalated into a legal battle between RPDR-PKPP and the farmers who sought judicial review and won a court order halting eviction notices against them pending the hearing on their application on October 28.
