The Supreme Court on Sunday forwarded two writ petitions against the split of the Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal to a full bench for hearing.

A division bench of Justices Hari Prasad Phuyal and Til Prasad Shrestha, hearing the petition registered by the JSP-Nepal chair Upendra Yadav, ordered that the petitions be presented to a full bench.

Yadav moved the apex court on June 13 to challenge the Election Commission’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 the group’s failure to meet the criteria requiring support of 40 percent of members both from the party’s central committee and the parliamentary party.

Though Ashok 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.

During an initial hearing on June 15, a single bench of Justice Binod Sharma ordered the election body to put the party registration process on hold for now.

Yadav had also filed another petition seeking a court order to bar seven lawmakers from the splinter group from serving as members of the House of Representatives.

The apex court forwarded both petitions to the full bench to resolve the case.