NEW DELHI: The Congress, with a mere 44 members in a house of 545 Lok Sabha MPs, is going to head two more crucial parliamentary standing committees that, among other things, take a close look at the legislative bills introduced by the government.
Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader, P. Chidambaram, who was recently elected to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, has been appointed as the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) on Home Affairs.
He will be succeeding P. Bhattacharya. Anand Sharma, Mr. Chidambaram’s colleague in both the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the Congress, is the new Chairman of the PSC on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice.
In another significant change, senior Trinamool Congress leader Mukul Roy has succeeded Kanwar Deep Singh as Chairperson of the Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture.
Veerappa Moily, Shashi Tharoor and Maj. Gen. AVSM (Retd) B.C. Khanduri will continue to be the Chairpersons of the PSCson Finance, External Affairs and Defence respectively.
An announcement regarding the re-constitution of the Committees was made on September 15 in the Lok Sabha bulletin, which provides members with general information relating to parliamentary and other matters.
Though the Congress party has shrunk in the Lok Sabha and further lost some of its strength after the recent round of elections to the Rajya Sabha, several members of the party have been given charge of key parliamentary committees, perhaps reflecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling combine’s changed strategy for dealing with the main opposition party.
This strategy was at play in the recently concluded session of Parliament, which transacted record business in recent years.
