diff --git a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContext.scala b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContext.scala
index 3cd09b0d48113..00988bc480dc8 100644
--- a/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContext.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContext.scala
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ class MLContext(val sparkContext: SparkContext) {
    * where the feature indices are converted to zero-based.
    *
    * @param path file or directory path in any Hadoop-supported file system URI
+   * @param minSplits min number of partitions, default: sparkContext.defaultMinSplits
    * @param numFeatures number of features, which will be determined from the input data if a
    *                    non-positive value is given. The default value is 0.
    * @param labelParser parser for labels, default: _.toDouble
@@ -46,9 +47,13 @@ class MLContext(val sparkContext: SparkContext) {
    */
   def libSVMFile(
       path: String,
+      minSplits: Int = sparkContext.defaultMinSplits,
       numFeatures: Int = 0,
       labelParser: String => Double = _.toDouble): RDD[LabeledPoint] = {
-    val parsed = sparkContext.textFile(path).map(_.trim).filter(!_.isEmpty).map(_.split(' '))
+    val parsed = sparkContext.textFile(path, minSplits)
+      .map(_.trim)
+      .filter(!_.isEmpty)
+      .map(_.split(' '))
     // Determine number of features.
     val d = if (numFeatures > 0) {
       numFeatures
diff --git a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContextSuite.scala b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContextSuite.scala
index 05be434590c48..6313978d546b9 100644
--- a/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContextSuite.scala
+++ b/mllib/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/mllib/MLContextSuite.scala
@@ -41,8 +41,8 @@ class MLContextSuite extends FunSuite with LocalSparkContext {
 
     val mlc = MLContext(sc)
 
-    val pointsWithNumFeatures = mlc.libSVMFile(tempDir.toURI.toString, 6).collect()
-    val pointsWithoutNumFeatures = mlc.libSVMFile(tempDir.toURI.toString, 0).collect()
+    val pointsWithNumFeatures = mlc.libSVMFile(tempDir.toURI.toString, numFeatures = 6).collect()
+    val pointsWithoutNumFeatures = mlc.libSVMFile(tempDir.toURI.toString).collect()
 
     for (points <- Seq(pointsWithNumFeatures, pointsWithoutNumFeatures)) {
       assert(points.length === 3)