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Congress not to head any of 4 key House panels
For the first time in recent history, the country’s principal Opposition party will not be heading any of the four key parliamentary standing committees — home affairs, defence, finance and external affairs.
For the first time in recent history, the country’s principal Opposition party will not be heading any of the four key parliamentary standing committees — home affairs, defence, finance and external affairs. Instead, the Congress party might head the commerce, chemical and fertilizers and the environment committees of Parliament.
The party will continue to lead the public accounts panel.
The government, according to a senior Congress leader who asked not to be named, has already informed the Opposition party that the home panel, currently headed by lawmaker Abhishek Singhvi, would no longer remain under the party. On September 17, HT reported that the Congress party was working to retain the chairmanship of the home affairs panel, considered one of the key House bodies.
The party lost the chairmanship of the external affairs and finance panels when they were revamped after the 2019 election.
In general, the leadership of committees is assigned to parties on the basis of their strength in the houses. Among opposition parties, the Biju Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Trinamool Congress (TMC) are among those with chairmanship of standing committees. But the TMC, is set to lose its lone chairman’s seat in the upcoming reshuffle.
A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who asked not to be named said the opposition has been trying to politicise the issue of the house panels. The Congress has not even sent the names of representatives for the committee on home affairs and corporate affairs, this person added.
The BJP leader said the opposition rakes up the issue of committee chairmanship and meetings, but that attention should be paid to the actual process of deliberations and discussions and finalising reports on time.
The Congress may be offered the commerce panel instead of the home affairs committee, the Congress leader cited in the first instance, said. The government also plans to take away the information technology (IT) panel’s chairmanship from Shashi Tharoor, one of the three candidates for the Congress president election.
“Government managers have indicated that instead of the IT panel, the party can get the committee on chemicals and fertilizers. We have strongly protested the move. Now, everything depends on Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla,” the leader said.
Congress’ floor leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Chowdhury has already questioned the intent behind the move and argued that while a similar position is being taken away in the Rajya Sabha on the pretext that the Congress has seen its presence shrink in the Upper House, “there has been no such change in the Lok Sabha, which raises ominous questions about the real intent behind such a decision.” The number of Congress Rajya Sabha members has come down from 54 to 31 in the last five years.
Traditionally, main opposition party got the chairmanship of the public accounts committee and some of the key committees. In the UPA era, Yashwant Sinha headed the finance panel for a long time while late Sushma Swaraj was the chairperson of the home Affairs panel.
Chowdhury claimed the government’s decision is a departure from existing conventions. “There is no extenuating reason for this repeated attempt to dilute the role of the principal Opposition party in the Lok Sabha. The government must understand that both the principle of deliberation and consultation, as well as conventions that encourage bipartisan cooperation within the functioning of critical bodies like department-related standing committees, must be honoured.”
