Congress MP Shashi Tharoor was on Saturday again appointed as the chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, The Hindu reported, citing an official notification.
The Parliamentary panels were reconstituted a month after their tenure had ended.
Some Bharatiya Janata Party members of the committee had demanded the removal of Tharoor as chief of the Information Technology panel in the developments that followed the Pegasus spyware row. The Congress MP had sought Lok Sabha Speaker’s action against three BJP MPs who had scuttled a meeting of the panel to discuss allegations of surveillance of phones using the Israeli spyware.
Meanwhile, the rejig in the Parliamentary standing committees also saw a number of senior BJP leaders, who were dropped in the Union Cabinet reshuffle in July, finding a slot in the panels.
Ravi Shankar Prasad is in the finance panel, Prakash Javadekar and Harsh Vardhan are in the Standing Committee for External Affairs, Sadanand Gowda is in defence, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in law and Santosh Gangwar in the committee on commerce, according to the Hindustan Times.
Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who was widely expected to get a berth in the Union Cabinet during the July reshuffle, has been named the chairman of the Standing Committee on Law and Justice.
Among prominent Opposition leaders, Congress’ Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Trinamool Congress’ Derek O’ Brien have been named in the Standing Committee for Home Affairs. Congress leader Anand Sharma will continue to head the home affairs panel, while party MP Rahul Gandhi remains in the defence committee.
Congress’ Jairam Ramesh will head the panel on science and technology, environment, forests and climate change, according to The Indian Express.
Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha has been moved from railways to labour committee, while Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut has been shifted from defence to external affairs panel.
At least 28 Rajya Sabha MPs were moved out of their existing panels due to poor attendance, an unidentified senior official of the Upper House told the Hindustan Times. As many as 12 of these MPs had not attended a single meeting of their respective standing committees in the past one year, the official said.
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