Mokhtar Sidin JCA:

[1] In this appeal the respondent who was the applicant in the court below applied to the High Court for an order of certiorari to quash the order of the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (the appellant) dated 9 October 2000. The applicant also applied for an order of Mandamus to direct the appellant, the respondent in the court below, to reinstate the applicant as a professional engineer registered with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia, and for the order of the Board of Engineers dated 9 October 2000 be quashed. The learned judge allowed the application. The Board of Engineers then appealed to this court. We have dismissed the appeal earlier. We now give our reasons doing so.

[2] In order to avoid any confusion I will refer to the parties as they were in the court below. The applicant was at all material times, a professional engineer registered with the Board of Engineers, Malaysia and the principal partner of the firm of PKKL Partners Sdn Bhd. The respondent, the Board of Engineers, Malaysia, is a body corporate established under the Registration of Engineers Act 1967, and are at all material times, having their address at Tingkat 17, Ibu Pejabat JKR, Kompleks Kerja Raya Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Salahuddin, 50580 Kuala Lumpur. The respondent had, via a letter dated 9 October 2000, ordered the cancellation of the applicant's registration as a professional engineer with the Board (hereinafter referred to as "the said order"). In his statement pursuant to O. 53 r. 3(2) of the Rules of the High Court the applicant avers that the said order was issued ultra vires and/or was wrongfully issued, on the following grounds:

(a) That the Board of Engineers, Malaysia had acted ultra vires by issuing the order canceling the registration of the applicant on 9 October 2000 (hereinafter referred to as the "said order") when it was improperly and/or not properly constituted, and/or was not empowered to do so in accordance with the Registration of Engineers Act 1967 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act").

(b) That the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (hereinafter referred to as "the board") failed to observe the rules of natural justice and/or procedural fairness by its failure to establish proper procedures in the hearing thereby depriving the full and proper exercise of the applicant's rights to a fair hearing.

(c) The board had acted ultra vires its statutory authority in the manner in which the hearing was conducted, by failing to appreciate that in the case of a disciplinary hearing, under the Malaysian system of justice, the process is adversarial and not inquisitonal.

(d) That the board had breached the rules of natural justice and/or procedural fairness and had showed its bias in, inter alia:

(i) when it decided to proceed on four additional charges over and above a single charge proposed by the Ad-Hoc Committee investigating into the applicant's conduct ("the Ad-Hoc Investigation Committee");

(ii) when the board decided that it was not bound to accept the Investigation Committee's advice and in so doing had acted as prosecutor and judge in the same cause.

(e) That the board failed to observe the rules of natural justice and/or procedural fairness by its failure to identify to the applicant who the complainant was and/or its failure to produce a complainant and/or a complaint at the hearing, thereby depriving the applicant of his full and proper exercise of his rights to a fair hearing.

(f) That the board had erred in law and breached the rules of natural justice and/or procedural fairness in holding that the existence of the complaint from the Majlis Perbandaran Shah Alam ("MPSA") was not relevant to the validity of the charges and that the board was entitled in law to act in the absence of complaints and/or complainants.

(g) That the board failed to observe the rules of natural justice and/or procedural fairness and had shown its bias in making an adverse presumption that the applicant was guilty until found innocen