The Supreme Court (SC) has issued an interim order instructing to not punish CPN-UML lawmakers Som Prasad Pandey and Sharada Bhatta if they choose CPN (Unified Socialist).
The Election Commission had refused to authenticate their verification for the new party pointing that their names were not included in the list that the party had first submitted while applying for registration.
A joint bench of Justices Ishwar Khatiwada and Nahakul Subedi hearing the petition by the lawmakers against the Election Commission decision has issued the interim order on Tuesday allowing them to be affiliated with the new party. The lawmakers in the petition had also demanded that they be prevented from expulsion by UML for quitting the party.
The Apex Court has issued the interim order stating that there should be no action denying them their right to join Unified Socialist until the final verdict on the case is issued. It has also chided the Election Commission for allowing Jhala Nath Khanal, who had also not signed in the application, to verify (from New Delhi) on the day of verification but not allowing the two lawmakers to join the new party on that day calling the discrimination inappropriate.
Twenty-nine federal lawmakers and 54 central members from CPN-UML had applied for registration of CPN (Unified Socialist) with the Election Commission. The 29 federal lawmakers included 22 House of Representatives (HoR) members and seven National Assembly members were summoned by the Election Commission for verification on August 25.
Pandey and Bhatta had also gone to the Election Commission that day but the Election Commission refused to authenticate saying their names were not included in the list submitted at the time of application.
Pandey is HoR member and Bhatta National Assembly member.
The party had applied for registration after the government brought an ordinance allowing split of parties with support of just 20 percent in either the central committee or parliamentary party. The act about political parties required support of 40 percent in both the parliamentary party and the central committee to split any political party.
