Congress to head 4 Parliamentary committees, BJP keeps chairmanship of most     

The Modi government has constituted the Parliamentary Standing Committees 82 days after the commencement of the 17th Lok Sabha session on June 24 and it has decided to keep the chairmanship of most committees ignoring precedence, except for Home Affairs. The list which was released is replete with spelling errors too.

Congress is heading four of the Standing Committees – Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Committee on Home Affairs, Committee on Information Technology and Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests.

Congress’ leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury will head the PAC, Anand Sharma the Home Affairs Committee, the IT Committee by Shashi Tharoor and Jairam Ramesh will head the Committee on Environment.

Earlier, the Opposition had always headed the committees on finance and external affairs, but now BJP MPs will be heading it. Previously, Congress leaders Veerappa Moily and Shashi Tharoor used to head it, but now it will be headed by BJP leaders Jayant Sinha and PP Choudhary will head the panels on finance and external affairs respectively.

The Finance Committee will have BJD's Pinaki Misra, Congress' Digvijaya Singh, Manish Tiwari and Ambika Soni as its members. In the External Affairs Committee, there is P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal of the Congress, SP's Jaya Bachchan and Nationalist Congress Party’s Sharad Pawar.

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and Congress MP Karti Chidambaram are also among the members of the Information Technology committee along with Tejasvi Surya and Sunny Deol.

Additionally, the government has changed the panel in which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi used to be a member of. Gandhi has been moved to the parliamentary panel on Defence from the panel on external affairs. Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi and Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut are a part of this committee, which will be headed by BJP’s Odisha MP Jual Oram.

In the environment Committee, AIMIM (All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen) MP Asaduddin Owasi and BJP MPs Sakshi Maharaj are on the panel along with BJP’s Anantkumar Hegde and CPI’s Binoy Viswam.

YSR Congress Party's V Vijaya Sai Reddy appointed as Chairperson of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce. In the Committee there are Congress MP Vayalar Ravi and Shiromani Akali Dal’s Sukhbir Singh Badal.

Samajwadi Party’s Prof Ram Gopal Yadav is the chairperson of the Committee on Health and Welfare, which also has Congress leader AK Antony and first time MP Ramya Haridas as its members.

BJP’s Jagdambika Pal is heading the standing committee on Urban Development, which also has sexual harassment accused MP MJ Akbar as one of its members. It also has Congress MPs Kumar Ketkar, Hibi Eden and Benny Behanan as its members along with BJP’s Hema Malini.

Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Bhupender Yadav is heading the committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special focus on the Jal Shakti ministry, the saffron party’s Sanjay Jaiswal will be heading the committee on Water Resources. This committee has Congress’ Madhusudan Mistry and DK Shivkumar’s younger brother DK Suresh, TMC’s Nusrat Jahan and Nationalist Congress Party’s Agatha Sangma as members.

DMK’s K Kanimozhi’s is the chairman of the Chemicals and Fertilisers, which also has Revolutionary Socialist Party’s NK Premachandran and Assam United Democratic Front’s Badruddin Ajmal as its members. However, six seats are yet to be filled in this committee.

The chairmanship of panels on Railways and Agriculture has been given to former ministers and senior BJP leaders Radha Mohan Singh and PC Gaddigoudar. The panel on Transport, Tourism, and Culture is headed by Rajya Sabha member TG Venkatesh who has joined the BJP from TDP recently. TMC’s Derek O’Brien was heading it. O’Brien is now a part of the committee on Human Resources Development, which is headed by BJP’s Satyanarayan Jatiya. This committee now has Congress leaders MV Rajeev Gowda, TN Prathapan and BJP’s Chandrani Murmu in it too.

The Committee on Industries is headed by Telangana Rashtra Samithi member K. Keshava Rao.