Key Parliamentary Panels Formed Without Election

Key parliamentary panels, including the Public Accounts Committee, have started taking shape, mostly by consensus as opposed to elections that took place in the previous Lok Sabha. Besides the PAC, which examines government expenditure, the Committee on Public Undertakings, the Committee on Estimates, the Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Joint Committee on Office of Profit and the Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes have been formed without election.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is expected to nominate chairpersons of the panels soon, parliamentary officials said.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju and his team of floor managers have worked to ensure that appointments to the committees take place by consensus.

As many as 19 nominations were received for the election to the PAC from the Lok Sabha. The Lower House of Parliament elects 15 members to the PAC, while seven members are from the Rajya Sabha.

“Subsequently, four candidates withdrew their candidature from the election,” the Lok Sabha bulletin said, leading to the nomination of the remaining 15 members to the PAC.

Senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, DMK leader T R Baalu, BJP leaders Anurag Thakur, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Tejasvi Surya, Trinamool leader Saugata Ray and Samajwadi Party leader Dharmendra Yadav are members of the PAC.

36 nominations were received for the 30-member Committee on Estimates and six members withdrew from the elections on assurance from the government for a place in other parliamentary panels.

For the 15 seats on the Committee on Public Undertakings, 27 members had filed nomination. Subsequently, 12 members withdrew their nominations and the candidates were declared elected unopposed.

For the 20-member Committee on Welfare of SC and STs and the Committee on Welfare of OBCs, 27 and 23 nominations were received by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

While seven members withdrew from the race for a seat on the panel on welfare of Scheduled Castes and Tribes, three members took back their papers from the election on the panel on welfare of OBCs, leading to the appointments to the panels without casting of the ballot.