Live Mint, September 14, 2019
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will dominate the proceedings of the department related standing committees of Parliament as members of the party are heading 14 out of the 24 committees announced on Friday evening.
The biggest setback has come for Congress which has lost the prestigious committees like finance and external affairs to BJP. As per the convention, standing committee of finance is normally headed by a senior leader of the opposition party but this time the post has been given to former union minister Jayant Sinha. The Member of Parliament (MP) from Hazaribagh is the son of former finance minister Yashwant Sinha.
The junior Sinha was a minister of state for finance in the first term of the Narendra Modi government before he was moved to a similar role in the aviation ministry. He doesn’t hold any ministry in the current government. The only ally of the BJP to have got chairmanship of a parliamentary committee is the Shiv Sena.
Interestingly, like-minded parties who have often extended issue-based support to BJP like YSRCP and Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) have been given standing committee of commerce and standing committee of industry respectively.
Congress has been given standing committee of home affairs which will be headed by former commerce minister Anand Sharma. Congress leader and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh will head the committee on science and technology, environment and forests.
Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay has been made chairman of standing committee of consumer affairs, and public administration while Bhartruhari Mahtab of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has been made chairman of standing committee of labour.
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