The Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal has announced to knock the judiciary's door against the Election Commission's decision to recognise its spliter group as a new political party.

The party led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health and Population Upendra Yadav has concluded that the registration of Janata Samajbadi Party chaired by Ashok Rai is illegal.

"The new party was registered overnight even without the law to do so. Never in history has any new party been registered so swiftly," said Yadav, during a news conference on Wednesday. "We will move the court against the illegal decision."

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Two days later, the ordinance was repealed, having served its purpose. The provisions amended by the ordinance have become void after it was repealed.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

"The newly formed party is neither theoretically nor in principle different [from his party]," he said, claiming that he had always been accommodative of the leaders from the dissident faction and made lawmakers and ministers. He had nothing more to offer, according to Yadav.

The split follows a long-standing discontent in the party. The leaders of the Rai-led party claim that they had to revolt against the leadership as Yadav ran the party in an autocratic manner.

A faction led by the party’s federal council chair Ashok Rai on Sunday filed an application at the commission to register a new party while Yadav was on a foreign trip. The commission on Monday registered the party with seven out of 12 members of the House of Representatives. That left only five lawmakers with Yadav.

The commission has summoned the leaders to verify which party they want to choose.

Yadav said the split was an outcome of the false narrative that attempts were being made to topple the government. It is nothing but rumor that a new government was being formed together with the Nepali Congress and the CPN (Unified Socialist), Yadav said.

After his return from foreign trip, Yadav on Tuesday met Prime Minister and CPN (Maoist Centre) chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal to assure that his party will remain in the ruling alliance.

The JSP-Nepal on Tuesday itself concluded that the present alliance should continue until the next elections. Rubbishing the speculations that attempts were being made to change the present alliance, Yadav claimed that he had not met any Congress leader after the formation of the new Dahal-led government in March.

The present five-party alliance was formed on March 4 after the Maoist Centre ditched the Congress to join hands with the CPN-UML. "We will continue our support to the government. The future course will be determined on the basis of how things unfold," he said.

Yadav claimed that the party hasn't split; only a few people had left it. "I still hold the majority in all party structures and committees," he said.