The Supreme Court (SC) has refused to issue interim order in the petitions against the ordinance issued by President Bidya Devi Bhandari making splitting of parties easier.
The constitutional bench of SC conducting the first hearing on six separate petitions filed against the ordinance has issued show cause notice on Friday but and stated there will be no interim order.
The constitutional bench included Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher Rana, and Justices Deepak Kumar Karki, Meera Khadka, Hari Krishna Karki and Ishwore Khatiwada.
The petitioners demanded the decision to amend the legal provision about splitting parties through the ordinance be revoked pointing that serious legislations like that about splitting parties should not be brought through an ordinance evading the House.
The ordinance brought by the Sher Bahadur Deuba government on August 17 allows split of a party with support of just 20 percent in either the central committee or parliamentary party. The act about political parties earlier required support of 40 percent in both the parliamentary party and the central committee to split any political party.
The ordinance also made another amendment in the act about political parties removing the provision requiring at least three percent of votes through the proportional representation (PR) electoral system to be recognized as a national party.
The act earlier required a party to get at least three percent of votes in the PR system, and win at least one seat in the first past the post electoral system (FPTP) to become a national party.
CPN-UML and Janata Samajwadi party (JSP) have already split in accordance to the ordinance and new parties CPN (Unified Socialist) and Loktantrik Samajwadi party (LSP) have been registered with the Election Commission on Wednesday.
UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli subsequently has moved the SC against registration of CPN (Unified Socialist) pointing that 14 House of Representatives (HoR) members who verified at the Election Commission for registration of the new party were already expelled by UML.
