Tharoor to head standing committee on external affairs, Digvijaya to chair panel on education

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor will head the parliamentary standing committee on external affairs and veteran leader Digvijaya Singh will head the panel on education, party sources said on Thursday.

Former Punjab chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi will lead the parliamentary standing committee on agriculture and Koraput MP Saptagiri Ulaka will head the panel on rural development.

Channi, who is a Dalit, and Ulaka, who hails from a tribal community, were chosen by the party with social justice being the centrepiece of all recent appointments.

The leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has been stressing the participation of the deprived sections in governance and calling for the party organisation to be more inclusive.

The sources said the Congress has forwarded the names of the four leaders to head the four department-related parliamentary standing committees it has been assigned to lead.

While there has been no official notification on the chairship of the parliamentary standing committees, it is expected to come out soon.

The Congress will chair the Department Related Standing Committee on External Affairs; Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing; Rural Development and Panchayati Raj in the Lok Sabha; and Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports in the Rajya Sabha.

This was decided after hectic parleys between the government and the opposition over the panels' chairship.

Congress' chief whip in the Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh and the party's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi were involved in the negotiations with the government to arrive at a consensus.

Significantly, the Congress will chair the crucial committee on external affairs after a gap of five years. Tharoor had also headed the panel on external affairs between September 2014 and May 2019.

In the previous Lok Sabha, the Congress held the chairship of two department-related standing committees in the Rajya Sabha and one in the Lok Sabha.

While Ramesh headed the committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Abhishek Singhvi chaired the panel on Commerce. Tharoor headed the Committee on Chemicals and Fertilisers in the Lok Sabha.

Ramesh will this time be a member of the Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, a panel he headed last time.

Talks had been going on for quite some time over the chairship of the department-related standing committees, with the government and opposition bargaining hard over control of key committees such as external affairs, defence, finance and home.

Department-related standing committees deal with various Union ministries and scrutinise their budgetary allocations and bills introduced in Parliament.

They also recommend the government to bring bills and make policies on important issues.

The Congress already has K C Venugopal as chairperson of the key Public Accounts Committee. While a majority of the standing committees come under the Lok Sabha Secretariat, some are serviced by the Rajya Sabha.