• BJP member P.P. Chaudhary was appointed as chairman of Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) set up to examine Bills proposing simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.

• Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla constituted the 39-member committee and appointed Chaudhary, a former Union minister of state for law and justice, as its chairman.

• Earlier, Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had moved resolutions in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to refer the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill and the Union Territories Laws (Amendment) Bill to a joint committee of the two Houses.

• A JPC is an ad-hoc committee of the Parliament to carry out detailed scrutiny of a specific matter within a specific time.

• As per the resolution moved by Meghwal, the committee has been asked to submit its report to the Lok Sabha by the first day of the last week of the next session.

• However, considering the importance of the measure, the committee could get an extension in tenure as required. 

• The panel has 27 members from the Lok Sabha and 12 from the Rajya Sabha.

• The government decided to increase the committee’s strength from 31 to 39 as more political parties expressed desire to be part of the exercise to examine the two draft legislations.

• Former Union ministers Anurag Thakur, Parshottam Rupala, Manish Tewari and several first-term lawmakers, including Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Bansuri Swaraj and Sambit Patra, are members of the committee. 

• Among the 39 members of the committee, 16 are from the BJP, five from the Congress, two each from the SP, TMC and the DMK, and one each from the Shiv Sena, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), Janasena Party, Aam Aadmi Party, Shiv Sena-UBT, NCP-SP, CPI(M), Biju Janata Dal and YSRCP.

• The NDA has 22 members and 15 are from the opposition INDIA bloc. 

• The BJD and the YSRCP are not members of the ruling or the opposition coalition. 

Parliamentary Committees

• The work done by the Parliament in modern times is not only varied and complex in nature, but also considerable in volume. The time at its disposal is limited. It cannot, therefore, give close consideration to all the legislative and other matters that come up before it. 

• A good deal of its business is, therefore, transacted in Committees of the House, known as Parliamentary Committees. 

• Parliamentary Committee means a committee which is appointed or elected by the House or nominated by the Speaker and which works under the direction of the Speaker and presents its report to the House or to the Speaker and the Secretariat for which is provided by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

By their nature, Parliamentary Committees are of two kinds: 

i) Standing Committees

ii) Ad hoc Committees. 

• Standing Committees are permanent and regular committees which are constituted from time to time in pursuance of the provisions of an Act of Parliament or Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha. The work of these Committees is of continuous nature. The Financial Committees, Departmentally Related Standing Committees and some other Committees come under the category of Standing Committees. 

• Ad hoc Committees are appointed for a specific purpose and they cease to exist when they finish the task assigned to them and submit a report. The principal Ad hoc Committees are the Select and Joint Committees on Bills. Railway Convention Committee, Joint Committee on Food Management in Parliament House Complex, etc also come under the category of Ad hoc Committees.

Broadly, the Parliamentary Committees may be classified into following:

a) Financial Committees

b) Departmentally Related Standing Committees

c) Other Parliamentary Standing Committees

d) Ad hoc Committees.

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