Hindustan Times (Lucknow)

INDIA grouping eyes more key roles across standing committees

After winning 236 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, the INDIA bloc of opposition parties expects that it will have more chairs of department-related standing committees, than opposition parties did in the last House.

The committees are expected to be announced during the upcoming Monsoon session.

Two Opposition leaders on Wednesday told HT that the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha secretaria­ts have written to parties, asking for nomination of respective party MPs in the 24 panels. “The Lok Sabha secretaria­t has written to me, asking us for nomination of MPs in different panels,” Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Lok Sabha lawmaker Sudip Bandopadhy­ay said. A senior official from Congress president and Rajya Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Mallikarju­n Kharge’s office also confirmed that a similar request was received from the Upper House secretaria­t.

There are 16 department-related standing committees under the Lok Sabha and eight under the Rajya Sabha. To be sure, no final decision has been taken on the chairs, which would be decided by the Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.

A senior Congress strategist said the INDIA bloc is expecting at least three additional chairs of the standing committees. “The Congress should get one more panel. Samajwadi Party, which doesn’t lead any such panel, should get one. And the TMC should also get one.” Apart from this, Lok Sabha’s LoP Rahul Gandhi is likely to head the Public Accounts Committee, the audit watchdog of Parliament, and a few Opposition leaders might also get charge of other panels.

Before the Lok Sabha elections in May 2024, the Congress party led three standing panels: commerce (till Abhishek Singhvi lost his Rajya Sabha seat in April), environmen­t and chemical & fertilizer­s. The TMC, despite being the third largest party in Parliament, didn’t get any chairman’s post. Samajwadi Party’s Ramgopal Yadav had initially chaired the health panel but this reverted to the BJP after some time. DMK’s K Kanimozhi led the rural developmen­t panel.

This time, both Samajwadi Party (41 MPs in Parliament across the two Houses) and the TMC (42 MPs in the two Houses) will be entitled to at least one chairman’s position. “But the final decision will be taken by Dhankhar or Birla,” said a senior non-Congress opposition leader.

An opposition functionar­y argued that “55% of the lawmakers are with the ruling side whereas 45% are in the Opposition. If the chairperso­ns’ posts are distribute­d in this ratio, the ruling side should get 13 chairperso­ns of the department-related standing committees, which oversee functionin­g of different ministries, and the others, 11.