Rahul Gandhi in Parliament’s Defence Committee, Kangana Ranaut makes debut

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, September 27, 2024: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi retains his membership of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence, while actor-politician and the BJP’s first-time parliamentarian Kangana Ranaut has been assigned to the committee on Information Technology, or IT, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat said in a notification issued Thursday.

Mr Gandhi, who is also Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, was a member of the Defence Committee in the previous Lok Sabha too. The committee will be chaired by BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh. The Congress has been given the chair of four committees, including the one for External Affairs, which will be led by its former Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor.

The Congress will also lead the committees on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports (to be chaired by Digvijaya Singh), Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Food Processing (ex -Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi), and Rural and Panchayati Raj (Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka). Seven-time MP and ex-Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has not been named.

Members from the ruling BJP will chair key committees, including Defence, Finance, Home, and Coal, Mines, and Steel, as well as Communications and IT, of which Ms Ranaut is a member. Home Affairs will be led by Radha Mohan Das Agrawal. Bhartruhari Mahtab, who served as Pro-Tem Speaker, will lead the prestigious Standing Committee on Finance.

Former union ministers Anurag Thakur and Rajiv Pratap Rudy will lead the committees on Coal, Mines and Steel, and Water Resources, while Nishikant Dubey gets the Comms and IT post.

In the previous Lok Sabha Mr Dubey and the Congress’ Shashi Tharoor had a bitter spat over social media giant Facebook’s rules for hate speech on its platform, which led to the BJP MP replacing the Congress leader as the committee head in 2022.

Among other opposition parties and leaders, the Samajwadi Party’s Jaya Bachchan joins fellow actor Ms Ranaut in the Comms and IT committee. Priyanka Chaturvedi, from the Shiv Sena group led by ex-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, joins the two of them.

Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra - whose disqualification from the last Lok Sabha made headlines - is also on that committee. Tiruchi Siva and Kanimozhi of Tamil Nadu’s DMK, will chair Industry and Consumer Affairs, and Food and Public Distribution.

Several allies of the BJP - which won the April-June general election thanks to 53 seats from its National Democratic Alliance partners - have been given leadership of one committee each. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar’s JDU will lead Housing and Urban Affairs, and Transport, Tourism, and Culture.

These two parties together won 28 Lok Sabha seats.

Ahead of the election in Maharashtra later this year, the BJP’s state allies - the Shiv Sena faction of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the NCP group of his deputy, Ajit Pawar - are also named. Leaders from their parties will helm the committees on Energy and Petroleum and Natural Gas panel.

Each department-related standing committees - which has representation from across party lines - acts as ’mini parliaments’ and keeps a tab on the functioning of their related ministries.

Each committee is a combination of members from both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.