Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav on Monday moved the Supreme Court, challenging the decision of the Election Commission to recognise its splinter group as a party.

Yadav filed a writ petition demanding to scrap the registration of the new party at the election body.

Yadav, in his petition, claimed the commission registered the party despite its failure to fulfil the required 40 percent support of central members for a party split.

Tekraj Bhusal of the Election Commission said JSP-Nepal had 406 committee members registered with the commission before its split to form the Janata Samajbadi Party.

The court will hear the case on Wednesday.

On May 5, Ashok Rai, the federal council chair of the Yadav-led Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal (JSP-Nepal), along with six other lawmakers and 30 central committee members of the party split the JSP-Nepal to form a new outfit Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP). The JSP-Nepal had altogether 12 lawmakers in the House of Representatives.

The Rai-led faction submitted an application to the Election Commission to register the new party on May 5. The next day, the election body registered the Janata Samajbadi Party under the leadership of Ashok Rai.

As there are no legal provisions in the Political Parties Act relating to the formation of a new party after a split in an existing one, the commission registered the new party as per the regulation on political parties.

On August 18, 2021, the then Sher Bahadur Deuba government had issued an ordinance to amend the Act to ease the split of two parties—the CPN-UML and the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal.

Revising a provision in the Act, which requires the support of 40 percent members both in the parliamentary party and the central committee in order to split a party, the ordinance lowered the bar to 20 percent in any one of the committees.

On August 26 that year, Madhav Kumar Nepal of the UML and Mahantha Thakur of the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal registered new parties, the CPN (Unified Socialist) and the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party, respectively.

Two days later, the ordinance was repealed, having served its purpose. The provisions amended by the ordinance have become void after it was repealed. Though a bill to reactivate the provisions of the Act has been registered in Parliament, it is yet to be endorsed.

Tekraj Bhusal of the Election Commission said JSP-Nepal had four hundred-six central committee members registered with the Commission before the disintegration to form the Janata Samajbadi Party.