Panel on insurance might not finish report before session: TMC

Trinamool Congress today expressed doubts on the tabling of the report by a select committee on Insurance Bill, which seeks to raise the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, during the upcoming winter session of the Parliament.
TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien said two members of the select committee -- Muktar Abbas Naqvi and J P Nadda -- have been made ministers in the Narendra Modi government and therefore, the panel needs to be reconstituted.
"Now that the select committee has to be reconstituted with two BJP MPs JP Nadda and Muktar Abbas Naqvi having been made members of the union ministry and that has to be approved by the Rajya Sabha after the session begins on November 24.

"So there was little hope of the select committee report being ready before the winter session ends", O'Brien, who is a member of the committee, said.
The Bill aims to raise the FDI cap on insurance from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.
A crucial meeting of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Insurance Bill, scheduled for November 12, suddenly was called off.
"Somewhere, at some point, the government lost its nerve," O'Brien said.
"It... Sought to bulldoze it through Parliament in the Budget Session so that the Prime Minister had a lollypop to carry to America. The opposition, primarily the Trinamool Congress, the CPI(M), which have been consistent critics of the Insurance Bill, and the Congress and JDU, succeeded in checking the advance of the Bill, arresting the BJP's unseemly hurry and taking the Bill to a select committee," the TMC MP said.