[en] Following on from our earlier paper Garg and Jain (2017 Phys. Scr. 92 094001) containing some initial results, we present a detailed discussion and complete results in this paper, which provide the first direct evidence for the validity of isospin as a nearly good quantum number in neutron-rich systems. The evidence comes from the reproduction of the general features of the partition-wise relative yields of neutron-rich fission fragments produced in two heavy-ion induced fusion fission reactions, namely ²⁰⁸Pb (¹⁸O, f) and ²³⁸U (¹⁸O, f), by using the concept of isospin conservation. To fix the isospin values and use the isospin algebra, we invoke what we term Kelson’s conjectures. We present a consistent scheme for isospin assignments based on these considerations. Our calculated results confirm that isospin behaves as an approximately good quantum number in neutron-rich systems, in this case, the fission fragments. (paper)