Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla nominates Tharoor to House panel on external affairs

Speaker Om Birla has nominated Shashi Tharoor as a member of the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs, which the Congress MP had chaired in the previous Lok Sabha.

After he was not appointed the chairman of the panel, Tharoor claimed that the government had decided to end the tradition of an Opposition member heading the committee.

"The speaker has changed the nomination of Deepak Baij from Committee on External Affairs to Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers, and also nominated Dr Shashi Tharoor to the Committee on External Affairs," Lok Sabha secretariat said in a bulletin.

Under Tharoor's chairmanship the panel on external affairs had summoned then foreign secretary S Jaishankar over the issue of Doklam standoff between India and China. Later the panel also called Jaishankar's successor Vijay Gokhale on the same issue.

Jaishankar is now the External Affairs Minister.

Tharoor, the Thiruvananthapuram MP, is now chairing the panel on information and technology.