The government should not make its bid to revise the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the ownership of Pulau Batu Puteh an election propaganda, said Parti Amanah Negara.

"I remind the government to refrain from making its claims on Pulau Batu Puteh as a propaganda solely to win the hearts of the people in facing the 14th general election," said Amanah deputy president Salahuddin Ayub.

He wanted the government not to repeat its previous mistake by poor preparations in the trial against its Singapore counterpart.

"The government should get ready their experts in all fields, particularly from the history sector," he said in a statement today.

"I met the late (historian) Nik Anuar Nik Mahmud who said the past failure was caused by lack of preparation in claiming the island," he said.

Malaysia had applied to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to revise its 2008 ruling on Pulau Batu Puteh, also known as Pedra Branca, following three documents discovered in the National Archives of the United Kingdom between Aug 4, 2016 and Jan 30, 2017.

The documents included an internal correspondence of the Singapore colonial authorities in 1958, an incident report filed in 1958 by a British naval officer and an annotated map of naval operations from the 1960s.

"Malaysia argues that the Court would have been bound to reach a different conclusion on the question of sovereignty over Pedra Branca had it been aware of this new evidence," said ICJ in a press release early this week.

Pulau Batu Puteh is located 7.7 nautical miles off the coast of Johor's Tanjung Penyusuh.

Both Malaysia and Singapore had decided to resolve the three-decade dispute of Middle Rocks and South Ledge via ICJ.

On May 23, 2008, the ICJ ruled that Singapore had sovereignty over Pulau Batu Puteh while Malaysia owned Middle Rocks, and South Ledge belonged to the state in whose territorial waters it is located.