President Bidya Devi Bhndari has summoned the new session of the federal parliament from September 8.

According to a statement issued by the Office of the President, President Bhandari summoned the session for 4pm on September 8 as per Article 93 (1) of the constitution on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers.

Earlier in the day, a Cabinet meeting had made a recommendation to the President for the same.

"Today’s Cabinet decided to recommend to the President that both houses of the federal parliament be summoned at 4pm on September 8," said Pampha Bhusal, energy minister.

The last session was prorogued on August 17.

A day after the parliament was prorogued, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government had introduced an ordinance to amend the Political Parties Act, easing party splits and registration of new parties. Aided by the ordinance, the Madhav Kumar Nepal group had split from the CPN-UML and the Mahhanth Thakur faction had broken away from the Janata Samajbadi Party.

Nepal has registered CPN (Unified Socialist) while Thakur has registered Loktantrik Samajbadi Party.

The Election Commission has given until September 7 to those who were elected to provincial and local levels under the UML and the Janata Samajbadi to choose sides–whether they want to stay in the mother parties or the newly registered outfits.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had held a discussion with Speaker Agni Sapkota and his coalition partners, Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and Madhav Nepal of the CPN (Unified Sociliast).

Though there have been talks about the government repealing the ordinance on Political Parties Act, introduced on August 18, no decision has been taken yet.

According to Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, minister for law, the ruling coalition has been discussing what to do with the ordinance. The Deuba government had met with massive criticism for issuing the ordinance a day after proroguing the House. As per amended provisions made through the ordinance, any group can split and register a party if it can prove it controls 20 percent of members either in the Central Committee or Parliamentary Party of the mother party.

If the ordinance is not repealed, the government will have to mandatorily present the ordinance before the House when it convenes its meeting on September 8.