Parliament panels reconstituted, Sushil Modi to head Personnel and Law panel, Tharoor retains IT

Over 24 Parliamentary Standing Committees were reconstituted on Saturday with senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi being made the head of Personnel and Law panel while other chairpersons from the previous panels were retained.

Shashi Tharoor would continue to head the Information Technology Standing Committee even as he had run-ins with BJP MPs over taking contentious issues questioning the government with BJP MP Nishikant Dubey even demanding his removal.

Modi, who was previously a member of Science and Technology and Urban Development panels, was moved to the Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice Committee and appointed as its Chairman due to Bhupender Yadav becoming a Minister.

Also Read | Choose MPs to Parliament panels based on interest, attendance: Vice President Naidu to parties

Congress' Anand Sharma would remain as Home committee head while Jairam Ramesh would head Science and Technology and Bhartruhari Mahtab would chair Labour. V Vijayasai Reddy (Commerce), K Keshav Rao (Industry), Vinay Sahasrabuddhe (Education), Ram Gopal Yadav (Health) and T G Venkatesh (Transport) are among the MPs who are heading panels.

Jual Oram will continue to head the Defence panel in which Rahul Gandhi has retained his membership while PP Choudhary retained his chairmanship in the External Affairs panel. Jayant Sinha will chair the Finance panel once again while former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be a member.

A number of MPs have been changed from one panel to another on the recommendations of parties. Each committee has 11 members of Rajya Sabha and 20 of Lok sabha.

Also Read | 78% Rajya Sabha MPs attended sittings daily between 2019-2021

Trinamool Congress' Derek O'Brien, who was a member of the Transport panel, and Congress' Abhishek Singhvi, who was in the Defence panel, have been moved to the Standing Committee on Home Affairs. KC Venugopal has taken Singhvi's place in the Defence panel.

RJD's Manoj K Jha has moved from Railways to Labour while Congress' Shaktisinh Gohel moved from Information and Technology to Transport, BJD's Sambit Patra from Education to Personnel and Law and Olympian Mary Kom from Food to Urban Development.

Sources said 50 of the 237 Rajya Sabha MPs saw themselves being moved to new committees. Nine MPs from BJP and six from Trinamool Congress are moved to new committees while Congress has four, Shiv Sena, CPI(M), RJD and YSR Congress has three each MPs moving to new committees.

All three RS members of Shiv Sena moved to new committees. Sanjay Raut from Defence to External Affairs, Anil Desai from Coal and Steel to Commerce and Priyanka Chaturvedi from Commerce to Transport. All three were regulars in panel meetings last year, sources said.

The 50 MPs who were moved to new committees included 28 who had poor attendance in the meetings of committees held during 2020-21. Twelve of the 28 had zero attendance.

Sources said attendance based nominations and changes could have been more but some party leaders opined that poor attendance last year was due to Covid-19 and state elections.

Also Read | Current Parliament unsafe, 'house of colonial power'; new building to be completed on time: Puri

Usually, the Standing Committees are reconstituted in September but this year it was delayed and sources attributed it to the delay from party leaders in responding to communications from the Rajya Sabha Secretariat.

On the instructions of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, the Secretariat had shared the attendance details of MPs to respective parties and sought reconsideration of nominations sent earlier. Reminders were also sent to some parties and this took some time in the process, they said.

Questions were raised earlier this week by Ramesh and O'Brien on the delay in reconstituting the 24 Standing Committees.

Watch the latest DH Videos here: