Congress to chair only 3 parliamentary committees, loses stewardship of External Affairs, Finance panels

September 15, 2019 01:15 am | Updated 01:15 am IST - New Delhi

Former Minister Jayant Sinha. File

Former Minister Jayant Sinha. File

The opposition Congress party will no longer chair the two crucial Parliamentary committees on Finance and External Affairs, which will now be headed by former NDA ministers Jayant Sinha and P.P. Chaudhary respectively. From heading six panels in the last Lok Sabha, Congress’s count has been reduced to three.

The Finance and External Affairs committees were previously headed by Congress leaders Veerappa Moily and Shashi Tharoor respectively. Mr. Moily lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress will, however, be chairing the committees on Home Affairs, Science and Technology and Environment and Forests, and a third one on Information & Technology. These are to be headed by Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh and Mr. Tharoor respectively. The Congress leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, has shot off a letter of protest to the Lok Sabha Speaker against the move.

“It’s official: government has decided to end the tradition of the leading Opposition party chairing the External Affairs Committee. Apparently a BJP MP will now hold the BJP government accountable instead. One more blow to our soft power, image&international reputation as a mature democracy,” Mr. Tharoor tweeted.

The Trinamool Congress’s count of Parliamentary panel chairs has also been halved to one with its Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’ Brien losing the chairmanship of the panel on Transport, Tourism and Culture. This, despite the fact that the party is the second largest opposition party in the Rajya Sabha. Mr. O’ Brien continues to be a member of the panel he once headed. Though the TMC has been mum on the issue, Congress’s Mr. Ramesh said that it was a sign of degrading cooperative federalism.

“The second largest opposition party in Rajya Sabha, which is the Trinamool Congress, has been denied chairmanship of a standing committee and chairmanship was given to parties which have two MPs, six MPs and seven MPs. If this is not an attack on co-operative federalism then what is? The chairmanship is determined by numbers,” Mr. Ramesh said, speaking at a seminar on implications of the changes to the terms of reference for the 15th Finance Commission. Mr. O’Brien is replaced by T. G. Venkatesh, who recently quit the Telugu Desam Party to join the BJP.

Out of 24 panels, 16 are headed by Lok Sabha members and eight are with the Rajya Sabha. Mr. Ramesh’s comments were aimed at the YSR Congress, which has only two members, and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which has six members, but have managed to get to chair panels. YSR Congress’s Vijay Sai Reddy will be heading the panel on Commerce and TRS’s K. Keshava Rao will head the committee on Industry. The Dravida Munnetra Kazgham’s M. Kanimozhi will lead the panel on Chemicals and Fertilizers.

Out of the 24 panels, 13 are with the BJP, with the party accommodating many of its former ministers as the chairmen of these panels. This includes Radha Mohan Singh, who heads the panel on Railways and Jual Oram who will head the committee on Defence.

The BJP also accommodated its allies JD(U) and Shiv Sena with the chairmanship of one panel each. Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who was a member of the panel on external affairs, has now been moved to the parliamentary committee on defence.

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