Parliamentary Standing Committees reconstituted

Congress will chair five Parliamentary Standing Committees which include Finance, External Affairs, Home, Science & Technology and Law, while Trinamool Congress gets Transport and Railways and parties like JD(U), BSP and AIADMK get to head one committee each.

It had been clear for some time that the government was denying the Congress the Leader of the Opposition post in the Lok Sabha but had maintained that Congress would get to head some Parliamentary committees. Veerappa Moily, Shashi Tharoor and P Bhattacharya will now chair the important committees on Finance, External Affairs and Home respectively. While Science and Technology will be headed by Ashwani Kumar , Law and Justice will have E M Sudarsana Natchiappan as its chairman.

 

Interestingly former PM Manmohan Singh is a member of the committee on Finance headed by his former Cabinet minister Veerappa Moily.

Former Union minister KV Thomas has already been appointed chairman Public Accounts Committee.

Congress was keen on getting to chair the crucial HRD ministry but BJP leader J P Nadda will now head the committee.

Of the other Opposition parties TMC's K D Singh will chair Transport, former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi will head Railways, BJD member Pinaki Mishra Urban Development, AIADMK's P Venugopal to chair Rural Development, Satish Chandra Mishra of BSP will chair the committee on Health and KC Tyagi of JD(U) Commerce and Industry.

Of the committee which will be headed by the ruling BJP party include that on Defence to be chaired by former General B C Khanduri while Rajiv Pratap Rudy has got chairmanship of Energy.

BJP ally Shiv Sena's Anandrao Adsul will chair chairmanship of Chemicals and Fertilisers, while TDP's J C Divakar Reddy will head panel on Food and Consumer Affairs.

BJP leaders who have got chairmanships of Parliamentary Committees include Chandan Mitra for Commerce, Hukum Deo Narayan Yadav for Agriculture, Virendra Kumar for Labour, Prahlad Joshi for Petroleum, Hukum Singh for Water Resources, Hansraj Ahir for Coal and Ramesh Bais for Social Justice.