Meenakshi Lekhi to head joint committee on Personal Data Protection Bill

BJP member Meenakshi Lekhi will head the joint committee of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha which will look into the Personal Data Protection Bill.

The information was given by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday. He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants elaborate discussions on the Bill that has wide implications.

The committee has 30 members, including Lekhi.

The Bill was referred to a joint committee on Wednesday after Lok Sabha adopted a motion moved by Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

The committee has 20 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha and would give its report on the first day of the last week of the next budget session.

Prasad had mentioned names of 20 members from the Lok Sabha -- Meenakshi Lekhi, PP Chaudhary, SS Ahluwalia, Tejasvi Surya, Ajay Bhatt, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Sanjay Jaiswal, Uday Pratap Singh, Kirit Premjibhai Solanki, Arvind Dharampuri, Heena Gavit, Rajeev Ranjan Singh, Gaurav Gogoi, Jothimani, Saugata Roy, Kanimozhi, PV Midhun Reddy, Shrikant Eknath Shinde, Bhartruhari Mahtab and Ritesh Pandey.

However, Trinamool Congress (TMC) said it wants to replace Saugata Roy with Mahua Moitra. The party said that Roy had many other tasks to handle and was pre-occupied.