DH Deciphers | What are Parliamentary Committees?

What are Parliamentary Committees? What purpose do they serve? 

Parliamentary committees are panels of members of Parliament, formed to scrutinise the functioning of the government, and to uphold executive accountability. The functioning of the government entails an enormous amount of activities, and due to the constraint of time, it is not possible for the Parliament to convene and discuss each action. To fill that gap, Committees of lawmakers are formed, and it is their responsibility to look at the functioning of the government.

PDT Achary, former Secretary General of the Lok Sabha Secretariat, who oversaw the administrative functioning of the 14th and 15th Lok Sabha, says that primary among the purposes that these committees serve is the scrutiny of budgets. “The committees scrutinise the annual reports tabled by the various ministries and departments of the government, their budgetary allocations, and also the revised budgets. The Committees also carry out a thorough and detailed scrutiny of Bills,” says Achary. 

What are the different kinds of Committees? 

Primarily, there are two kinds of committees – Standing Committees, which are permanent in nature, and Ad Hoc Committees, which are formed for a specific purpose and cease to exist once it is done. The various department-related committees, the crucial finance committees such as the Public Accounts Committee, the Public Undertaking Committee and the Committee of Estimates, as well as administrative committees and accountability committees are among the Standing Committees. The Business Advisory Committee (Lok Sabha), which recommends the functioning of the Lower House, the Committee on Privileges, Committee on the Welfare of SCs and ST, and the Committee of the Empowerment of Women are some of the key administrative Committees. In all, there are 24 department-related committees, which have 31 MPs, 21 from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha.

Among the Ad Hoc Committees are Select Committees, Joint Parliamentary Committees and Joint Select Committees. They are usually formed to investigate and scrutinise a key issue or a contentious legislation. A Joint Parliamentary Committee is formed when both the Houses agree on it, and as members it has twice the number of Lok Sabha MPs than Rajya Sabha MPs. Recent issues on which JPCs have been formed include the Data Protection Bill, the National Register of Citizens, and the Harshad Mehta scam. 

In Select Committees, Achary says, the government has the flexibility to pick experts on the subject. 

When was the Committee system adopted?

While Committees existed even before India gained Independence, the current system of Departmentally-Related Standing Committees came into being in April 1993, constituting 17 such committees. In July 2004, they were restructured and increased to 24 Committees. In this restructuring, the membership of each Committee was also reduced from 45 to 31 members. Today, 8 of these Committees are run by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat and 16 by the Lok Sabha Secretariat. Each Committee has around 31 Members, of which 21 are nominated by the Lok Speaker and 10 by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. The term of the members of these Committees is one year.

The Public Accounts Committee, which was formed in 1921 to scrutinise the accounts of the government through the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, predates this system, and is considered one of the most important committees.   

Is it mandatory for the government to accept the recommendations of Committees?

Most Parliamentary Committees have recommendatory powers; only a few have the mandate to amend laws. “Most Committees simply make recommendations to the House, which are not in mandatory remit. The recommendations could be accepted, but the government can choose not to accept all of them,” he adds. 

Achary says that it might not be possible for the government to accept every recommendation due to several constraints. “There are budgetary concerns and administrative issues, and Action Taken reports are filed by every department as a follow-up to the recommendations, where they may explain why they could not implement the recommendations,” he says. 

However, the Select Committees have a special power. “Select Committees, which usually have the representation of the government, which is mostly the concerned minister, have the right to amend laws,” he says. One of the recent examples of Select Committees is the 2020 Committee headed by BJP MP Bhupender Yadav, formed to scrutinise the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2019.