New Delhi: The BJP may get the chairmanship of seven to eight department-related parliamentary committees of the Lok Sabha, the Congress three and the Samajwadi Party one, sources said on Monday as the process for the constitution of 16 of these panels gets underway.
No other party, including the Trinamool Congress that is the fourth largest with 29 MPs, has the numbers to give them a numerical claim over the chairmanship of a committee, they said, adding that Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla would use his discretion to ensure fair representation at the top of these panels and among their members.
The department-related committees, 16 headed by Lok Sabha MPs and eight by Rajya Sabha members, are a key multi-party oversight over the working of different ministries, allowing their members to interact with stakeholders and influence policy.
The BJP, party sources said, might back some of its allies, especially the Shiv Sena, to get at least one chairmanship.
The Sena is the only major BJP ally without a Cabinet portfolio in the central government.
With the opposition’s strength in the Lok Sabha sizeably higher than the previous House, their representation in these panels is also likely to go up considerably.
While none of the department-related committees of the Lok Sabha has been formed so far, a few parliamentary panels, including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), have started taking shape.
Besides the PAC, which examines government expenditure, the Committee on Public Undertakings, Committee on Estimates, Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Joint Committee on Office of Profit, and the Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes have been constituted.
Official sources asserted that the government’s minders in Parliament worked to ensure that their members were chosen by consensus, noting that there were instances of elections taking place in the past to choose members of some of these panels.
They cited the example of a first-time but well-known MP who wanted to force an election to PAC membership but was cajoled to be part of the Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
He came from a Dalit community and was told he could effectively take up their issues in this panel to which he agreed, the sources said.
