NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has reconstituted parliamentary standing committees, with former PM Manmohan Singh staying away from any such committees.
BJP MPs will be heading 13 of the 24 parliamentary panels, while Congress leaders have bagged the chairmanship of three. The chairmanship of most of the key panels that scrutinise the ministries dealing with security affairs has been kept by the BJP.
While the finance committee will be headed by former Union minister and BJP MP Jayant Sinha, another former Union minister P P Choudhary will head the committee on external affairs, which also includes former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who is currently in judicial custody.
The panel on defence will be headed by the BJP MP Jual Oram and will have former Congress president Rahul Gandhi among one of the members.
Only the committee on the parliamentary standing committee on home affairs will be chaired by the deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma. His party colleagues Jairam Ramesh will head the panel on science and technology and environment while Congress MP Shashi Tharoor would head the committee on IT.
BJP national general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Bhupendra Yadav will head the panel on personnel, public grievance, law and justice. Samajwadi Party leader in the Rajya Sabha Ram Gopal Yadav will chair the committee on health and family welfare while TRS MP K Keshava Rao will head the panel on industry.
BJP Rajya Sabha MP Satyanarayan Jatiya would head the HRD panel while PC Gaddigoudar and Radha Mohan Singh will chair the committees on agriculture and railways, respectively.
Congress’s loss, BJP’s gain
BJP’s Jayant Sinha will chair the committee on finance, that was headed by M Veerappa Moily in the last Lok Sabha.
The standing committee on external affairs, earlier headed by Shashi Tharoor, will now be helmed by BJP’s P P Choudhary.