Bengal largely deprived of parliamentary committee chairpersonships
As the latest rejig of the parliamentary standing committees, the BJP-led Union government did something unprecedented. Going against precedence and every parliamentary decorum, the chairpersonship of all the six major parliamentary standing committees—Home Affairs, Information Technology, Defence, Health and Family Welfare, External Affairs and Finance—was put in the hands of the BJP and its allies.
None were given to either the largest Opposition party, Congress or the second largest, Trinamool Congress.
Congress retained the chairpersonship of only one parliamentary standing committee—Science and Technology, Environment and Forests. It was removed from the chairpersonships of the Home Affairs and Information Technology panels.
As for Trinamool Congress, it was left with the chairpersonship of only one panel, but an important one—Food and Consumer Affairs. But this has now gone to the BJP.
All party MPs are members of the committees but the chairpersonship is important as this is the person who decides the flow of discussions on important topics, authorises all decisions, calls the meetings of the committees throughout the year (without the calls, no meetings can be held) and, equally crucially, if, during voting on a decision, the numbers are tied, the chairperson’s vote decides the adoption or not of the decision.
There are a total of 56 committees in Parliament—24 department-related parliamentary standing committees, of which 16 are headed by a Lok Sabha MP and eight by a Rajya Sabha MP, 17 other Lok Sabha Committees, 12 Rajya Sabha standing house committees and three financial committees.
The department-related parliamentary standing committees each comprise of 31 MPs—21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha.
Number of chairpersonships held by parties (in descending order)
- BJP: 395 MPs, 31 chairpersons
- Congress: 84 MPs, 5 chairpersons
- DMK: 34 MPs, 3 chairpersons
- YSRCP: 31 MPs, 2 chairpersons
- BJD: 21 MPs, 2 chairpersons
- Shiv Sena: 22 MPs, 1 chairperson
- JDU: 21 MPs, 1 chairperson
- TRS: 16 MPs, 1 chairperson
- BSP: 11 MPs, 1 chairperson
- AIADMK: 5 MPs, 1 chairperson
Confounding all logic, Trinamool Congress, a party representing the important state of Bengal, with 36 MPs and AAP, with 10 MPs, were not given any chairpersonship.
