Parliament rejigs 24 panels, sets up 2 Select Committees, Joint panel on contentious Bills stuck

Shashi Tharoor, Digvijaya Singh and other Congress leaders retain committee chairs as Tejasvi Surya, Baijayant Panda named to head key Select Committees. But plans for a Joint Committee on contentious Bills stall amid Opposition boycott.

New Delhi: Twenty-four Parliamentary Standing Committees were reconstituted on Wednesday and two Select Committees of the Lok Sabha set up, though a decision on forming a Joint Committee of Parliament to examine contentious Bills on the removal of top political executives in detention continues to elude consensus.

Chairs of the 24 Department-related Standing Committees, including Shashi Tharoor who heads the External Affairs panel, have largely been renominated. Among the new appointments, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya will chair the Select Committee examining the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2025, while Baijayant Panda will head the Select Committee on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill.

The Select Committee on the Jan Vishwas Bill includes Praveen Khandelwal, N K Premachandran, S Venkatesan and Kalyan Banerjee, among others. The IBC Bill panel has C N Manjunath, Sanjay Jaiswal, Karti Chidambaram, Shreyas M Patel, Supriya Sule and Mahua Moitra as members.

Panda, who earlier chaired the Joint Committee on the Income Tax Bill, is seen as a safe choice, while Surya’s appointment is viewed as an endorsement from the BJP’s top leadership. The announcements came nearly 45 days after both Bills were referred to Select Committees.

However, the proposed Joint Committee of Parliament to examine three controversial Bills aimed at disqualifying top political executives detained in jail for 30 days or more remains stalled. Several Opposition parties, including Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, AAP and Shiv Sena (UBT), have already announced a boycott, while others such as Congress appear inclined to stay away as well.

Congress has retained all four of its Standing Committee chairpersons: besides Tharoor, Digvijaya Singh (Education), Charanjit Singh Channi (Agriculture), and Saptagiri Ulaka (Rural Development). While LoP in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and CPP chairperson Sonia Gandhi are not on any committee, Rahul Gandhi is a member of the Defence panel and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has been placed on the Home Affairs committee.

Among BJP members, Bhartruhari Mahtab (Finance) and Nishikant Dubey (Communications & IT) continue as chairmen. DMK’s Kanimozhi remains chair of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.

Trinamool’s Mahua Moitra has been shifted from Dubey’s Communications panel, where she frequently clashed with him, to the Defence panel chaired by BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh. The party had requested the Speaker for her transfer.

Other returning committee chairs include BJP’s Anurag Thakur (Coal, Mines and Steel) and Radha Mohan Das Agarwal (Home Affairs); Trinamool’s Dola Sen (Commerce) and Kirti Azad (Chemicals and Fertilisers); JD(U)’s Sanjay Kumar Jha (Transport, Tourism and Culture); NCP’s Sunil Tatkare (Petroleum and Natural Gas); and Shiv Sena’s Shrirang Appa Barne (Energy).