Govt forms IT Standing Committee, names Shashi Tharoor as chairperson

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor will head the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT), he announced on Saturday. The Congress Member of Parliament (MP) replaces Anurag Thakur, who is now the minister of state for finance and corporate affairs.

“I have been appointed as chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications & Information Technology. It is always a privilege to serve the nation through constructively pursuing government accountability to Parliament,” Tharoor tweeted.

The committee has 31 members — 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha. It also includes Gurdaspur Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sunny Deol, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress MP from Sivaganga Karti P Chidambaram, and Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya.

The panel will likely play an important role as the Personal Data Protection Bill gets tabled in Parliament.

The committee headed by Thakur made headlines just before the general elections when it asked social media companies including Facebook and Twitter to explain how they would tackle the issue of national security during the election cycle.