Venkaiah Naidu recasts 8 Rajya Sabha committees

Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu has reconstituted eight house committees affecting changes in the chairmanship of the committees on ethics and petitions besides replacing several members of various committees.

Prabhat Jha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the new Chairman of the Ethics Committee of Rajya Sabha replacing Narayan Lal Panchariya of BJP. Ethics Committee looks into conduct-related complaints against the members of the Upper House of the Parliament. Prasanna Acharya of BJD has been nominated as Chairman of the Committee on Petitions in place of Prabhat Jha of BJP.

Naidu has re-nominated T. Subbarami Reddy of Congress as Chairman of the Committee on Subordinate Legislation, A. Navaneetha Krishnan as Chairman of the Committee on Government Assurances, Om Prakash Mathur of BJP as Chairman of the House Committee that allots accommodation for members.

As per the rules of the House, Chairman of Rajya Sabha heads the Business Advisory Committee and the Committee on Rules. By convention, Deputy Chairman heads the Committee on Privileges.

The new members of the Business Advisory Committee of Rajya Sabha include BK Hariprasad (Congress), Narayan Lal Panchariya and Vinay P. Sahasrabuddhe of BJP and K. Keshava Rao of TRS. Leader of the House and Leader of the Opposition are special invitees to BAC.

The new members of the Committee on Rules include Satyanarayan Jatiya, Swapan Das Gupta and Y. S. Chowdary of BJP, P.L. Punia of Congress, Naresh Gujral of Akali Dal and Subhash Chandra and Amar Singh both independent.

These standing House committees of Rajya Sabha are concerned with the examination of various issues concerning the domain that is reflected in the names of the committees and their tenure is till next reconstitution.

Eight department-related standing committees under the control of Rajya Sabha that were reconstituted by Chairman Venkaiah Naidu in September this year undertake a detailed examination of the legislative proposals, demands for grants and other select subjects. Tenure of DRSCs is one year.