The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued an interlocutory interim order against the decision of the Election Commission to register the Ashok Rai-led group as a party.

Responding to a writ petition filed by Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal (JSP-Nepal) Chairman Upendra Yadav, a single bench of Justice Binod Sharma ordered the election body to put the party registration process on hold, for now.

Yadav on Monday moved the apex court, challenging the election body's decision to recognise the JSP-Nepal’s splinter group as a party. In his petition, Yadav accused the commission of registering the party despite its failure to meet the criteria, that is support of 40 percent of members both from the party’s central committee and the parliamentary party.

Though Rai was supported by seven of the party's 12 lawmakers, he showed the support of only 30 members of the central committee. According to officials at the election body, the Yadav-led party has 406 members in its central committee.

Yadav had named the Election Commission and others as defendants and has demanded that the commission’s decision to give recognition to the newly formed party be scrapped. Yadav has also sought a mandamus order from the apex court demanding that the status of the defecting leaders as lawmakers be scrapped.

An interlocutory interim order has been issued to put the decisions taken on May 6 and thereafter on hold as it seems appropriate to reach a conclusion only after following the discussions with the Election Commission, the bench said.

The court has summoned both the parties for a next hearing on May 21.

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 the legal provisions in the Political Parties Act relating to the formation of a new party after a split in an existing one have been invalidated, 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.