Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi is expected to be the new chairman of the prestigious Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the end of the short tenure of Gopinath Munde, who had taken over mid-year after Jaswant Singh vacated the position.
By convention the PAC chairmanship has been given to the main Opposition party for several decades.
The Opposition party is also in the process of shuffling chairmen of various standing committees. Mr. Yashwant Sinha, currently chairing the External Affairs standing committee is likely to move as chairman Finance committee, the position to be vacated by Mr. Joshi.
There is no clarity on who would be chairman of the External Affairs standing committee. Party sources declared that the BJP may want to exchange the chairmanship of this committee with some other as it does not have a suitable candidate for External Affairs since Mr. Sinha, a former External Affairs Minister, will take over as chairman Finance committee, and yet another former Minister Jaswant Singh is no longer with the party.
