The Supreme Court has refused to issue an interim order to the Election Commission as demanded by CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, who has contested the election body’s decision to register a new party under former UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal.

Nepal has severed his ties with the UML and registered a new party, CPN (Unified Socialist).

A single bench of Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana on Tuesday also issued a show cause notice to the defendants as to why the court should not grant the petition.

The bench has also ordered both the parties to appear before the court on September 13 to discuss the petitions.

“While considering the demand of the petitioner to issue an interim order, it will be appropriate to take a decision after discussing with both the parties,” states the order.

The court has also ordered the Election Commission to present all the documents that were presented while registering the CPN(Unified Socialist) on August 25.

On September 2, Oli filed three writ petitions at the Supreme Court demanding the quashing of the Election Commission’s decision to register CPN (Unified Socialist), relieving 14 federal parliament lawmakers of their posts, and revoking the assembly member status of two representatives in Lumbini Province.

In his petitions, Oli has named Speaker Agni Sapkota, Election Commission and Speaker of the Lumbini Provincial Assembly Purna Bahadur Gharti as defendants.

Ramesh Badal, who served as the attorney general in the erstwhile Oli government, said Oli has demanded that the Supreme Court invalidate the CPN (Unified Socialist), arguing that only 19.21 percent of the UML’s central committee had agreed to the split.

Oli has claimed in his petitions that nine party lawmakers and central members were already removed from the party and six others had not even signed the application while registering the new party.

The UML split was facilitated by the ordinance brought by the Sher Bahadur Deuba government that amended the Political Parties Act 2017, allowing a political party to split based on the decision of 20 percent of the party's Central Committee members or as many parliamentary party members.