Congress MPs Singhvi, Tharoor get chairmanship of parliamentary panels

Oct 17, 2022

By Payal Mehta
New Delhi [India], October 17 : Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who went missing on the first list of parliamentary committee chairmen rolled out recently, made their way into the second one.
Another list of Standing Committee chairmen have recently been announced in which Congress MPs have got the chairmanship of two panels - one of Lok Sabha and the other of Rajya Sabha.
Tharoor, who was replaced by Pratap Rao Jadhav as the chairman of Information Technology and Communications, is now the chairman of the Lok Sabha-powered Standing Committee for Chemicals and Fertilisers.
Singhvi who was earlier briefly chairing the Home panel after the term of Anand Sharma ended, is now the Chairman of the Standing Committee for Commerce.
These developments come after the government took away the committees like IT and Home from the Congress party in the Parliament citing that the party did not have the numbers for these.
The Congress party also has another committee in the Rajya Sabha with Jairam Ramesh chairing Environment.
In the recent Committee reorganisation, Samajwadi Party whose MP Professor Ram Gopal Yadav was removed as Health Committee chairman, while TMC also has no panel chief.
Earlier on October 4, a major reshuffle had taken place.
According to an official notification, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi who headed the Home panel was replaced by BJP Rajya Sabha MP and former DGP of Uttar Pradesh Brij Lal who has been named as the new chair.
Another loss for the Congress is losing the committee for IT which was chaired by Lok Sabha MP Tharoor. The Eknath Shinde-led faction of Shiv Sena now has its chairmanship in three-time Lok Sabha MP Prataprao Jadhav.
Professor Ram Gopal Yadav from the Samajwadi party, who had been holding the post for a long time as chairman of the Health Committee, was replaced by BJP MP Bhubaneshwar Kalita.