Rahul Gandhi and Kangana Ranaut Take Key Roles
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi continues his role on the defence committee, while actor-politician Kangana Ranaut makes her debut in the IT committee in Parliament. Discover the latest key parliamentary committee assignments for BJP, Congress, and their allies.
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New Delhi: According to a notification released by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat on Thursday, actor-politician and BJP lawmaker Kangana Ranaut has been assigned to the committee on Information Technology, or IT, while Congress MP Rahul Gandhi continues to serve on the Parliament's Standing Committee on Defence.
In the previous Lok Sabha, Mr Gandhi, who is currently the Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, served on the Defence Committee. BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh will serve as the committee's chair. Four committee chairs have been assigned to the Congress, with its former Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor chairing the committee on External Affairs.
In addition, the Congress will head the committees on agriculture, animal husbandry, and food processing (led by former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi), women, children, youth, and sports (to be chaired by Digvijaya Singh), and rural and Panchayati raj (Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka). Sonia Gandhi, a seven-time MP and former head of the Congress, is not identified.
Important committees such as Defence, Finance, Home, Coal, Mines, and Steel, and Communications and IT, of which Ms Ranaut is a member, will be chaired by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Radha Mohan Das Agrawal will be in charge of home affairs. Pro-Tem Speaker Bhartruhari Mahtab will chair the esteemed Standing Committee on Finance.
The committees on coal, mines and steel, and water resources will be chaired by former union ministers Anurag Thakur and Rajiv Pratap Rudy, with Nishikant Dubey appointed to head communications and information technology.
Following a bitter dispute over Facebook's policies regarding hate speech on its platform during the previous Lok Sabha, Mr Dubey and Congressman Shashi Tharoor were replaced as the head of the committee in 2022 by a BJP MP.
Along with other opposition parties and leaders, Jaya Bachchan of the Samajwadi Party and fellow actor Ms Ranaut are members of the Communications and IT committee. Joining the two is Priyanka Chaturvedi, a member of the Shiv Sena party, which is led by the former chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray.
On that committee is Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, whose disqualification from the previous Lok Sabha garnered media attention. Food and Public Distribution, as well as Industry and Consumer Affairs, will be chaired by DMK members Tiruchi Siva and Kanimozhi of Tamil Nadu.
Several BJP allies have been assigned committee leadership roles. The BJP won the general election in April-June because of 53 seats from its partners in the National Democratic Alliance. Transport, Tourism, and Culture will be led by Nitish Kumar's JDU in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh and Chandrababu Naidu's TDP in Andhra Pradesh.
Together, these two parties secured 28 seats in the Lok Sabha.
The NCP group of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Shiv Sena faction of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde are named as the BJP's state allies ahead of the Maharashtra election later this year. The committees on energy petroleum and natural gas will be led by party leaders.
Standing committees related to each department, with representation from both parties, function as "mini parliaments" and monitor the operations of the ministries that are related to them.
A combination of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha members make up each committee.