BJP MPs Replace Shashi Tharoor, Veerappa Moily As Heads Of Parliamentary Panels

Opposition parties slammed the government for delaying the formation of parliamentary committees as it expected that the BJP government may be keen on keeping many of the significant panels with itself.

Anand Sharma is now the only Congress MP to head a committee. (File Photo/ Getty)

New Delhi: In a big rejig at the two crucial parliamentary panels, MPs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have replaced Opposition MPs as the chairperson of the standing committees on finance and external affairs. According to a report by news agency PTI, BJP MP Jayant Sinha will be the chairperson of the standing committee on finance and PP Choudhary will lead the external affairs committee. The two crucial panels were led by Congress MPs in the previous Lok Sabha. In the 16th Lok Sabha, whose term ended earlier this year, the finance panel was headed by Congress MP Veerappa Moily and external affairs by Shashi Tharoor. Moily lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Tharoor, who retained his Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 General Elections, has now been made the head of the Standing Committee on Information Technology. Even former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who was a member of the panel on external affairs, has now been moved to the parliamentary panel on defence, which is headed by Jual Oram. The report also states that Derek O'Brien from Trinamool Congress (TMC), who was chairing the committee on transport, tourism and culture has been replaced by erstwhile TDP leader TG Venkatesh, who has recently joined BJP. O'Brien is now a member of the panel on Human Resource Development, which BJP's Satyanarayan Jatiya continues to head. Earlier this week, Tharoor had said he was 'dismayed' by a news report that the government might remove Congress from the chairperson’s post in the external affairs panel. “In the entire history of Parliamentary Standing Committees, the [committee] on External Affairs has always been headed by an Opposition Lok Sabha MP. Our tradition is foreign policy bipartisanship: our political differences stop at the nation’s borders. Dismaying,” he tweeted. Anand Sharma is now the only Congress MP to head a committee. He was appointed the chairperson of the committee on home affairs. In the recent past, Opposition parties had slammed the government for delaying the formation of parliamentary committees as it expected that the BJP government may be keen on keeping many of the significant panels with itself. With these changes, the Congress which was earlier heading two committees of the Lok Sabha will now be heading only one. Standing committees are allocated by Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha Chairman on the recommendation of the government.