NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday constituted 24 department related parliamentary standing committees.
Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi continues to be a member of the parliamentary panel on defence which is headed by BJP MP Jual Oraon.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor will head the panel on IT. Tharoor has been at loggerheads with BJP MPs on the issue of summoning of the representatives of Facebook.
Birla said he had constituted the committees in consultation with the Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, as each committee comprised 21 Lok Sabha and 10 Rajya Sabha members.
Senior BJP leader Vinay Sahasrabuddhe will head the panel on HRD. Congress’s Jairam Ramesh will head the panel on science and technology, environment and climate change.
A bitter slugfest had broken out between Tharoor and BJP MP and member of the parliamentary panel of information technology Nishikant Dubey over the suspension of 4G services in Jammu and Kashmir and summoning of Facebook executives over alleged misuse of the social media platform for hate-speech.
Besides Tharoor, various other Congress leaders who were critical of the government as chairperson of their respective parliamentary panels have been retained.
Congress leader Anand Sharma will continue to chair the parliamentary panel on home affairs and Jairam Ramesh will remain the head of the panel on environment and science and technology.
The chairperson of all parliamentary standing committees have been retained.
YSR Congress's Vijaysai Reddy has been reappointed the chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, Samajwadi Party's Ram Gopal Yadav of Health, TRS's K Keshava Rao of Industry, TMC's Sudip Bandyopadhyay of Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, BJD's Bhartruhari Mahtab of Labour.
DMK's Kanimozhi will continue to lead the panel on chemicals and fertilizers and JD(U)'s Rajiv Ranjan Singh will head the panel on energy.
All remaining chairpersons of the parliamentary standing committees, most of who are from the BJP, have also not been changed.
The department-related parliamentary standing committees are constituted for a period of one year and comprise 21 members from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha.
(With PTI Inputs)