The Opposition, led by the Congress, on Wednesday criticised the NDA Government for diluting the importance of various Standing Committees of Parliament by introducing Bills bypassing these panels without legislative scrutiny and charged that the Committees were now “irrelevant.” Raising the issue during Zero Hour in the Rajya Sabha, Anand Sharma (Congress) said out of 51 new Bills brought by the Government, 43 were not sent to any standing committee. He charged the government with using “brute majority” in the lok Sabha by introducing bills there and said the committees are being virtually made worthless and irrelevant adding the Government must come clean on this.
He also said departmental committees are made up of 10 members of the Upper House and 21 from the lok Sabha and they do “useful work.” As almost the entire Opposition agreed, Naresh Agarwal said former PM Manmohan Singh is a member of such panel on Finance, so is senior BJP leader lK Advani. Mentioning that there was a difference between a standing committee and a select committee, he said standing panels comprise of both the Houses while select committee belongs to only one House. While the Opposition members wanted the government to respond, none of the ministers present including leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley chose to reply.
