PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES

What is committee?

A committee is a group of people who come together for discussion and resolution of some work.
The parliamentary committee was established to deal with the matters in which the legislature cannot directly handle. The burden on one person is divided by the group of people in the parliamentary committees and they
bifurcate in their expertise field. Parliamentary committee works under the direction of speaker/chairman.

The parliamentary committee can be categorized into two types –

Permanent or standing parliamentary committees –
The standing committee is the permanent member of Parliament. It is a regular committee bit complex, having varied work.

It again involves:-
• Financial standing committees (FSC)
• Department related standing committees (DRSC)
• Other standing committees (OSC)

This Financial committees further has sub-committees as
1) Public accounts committee – It has 22 members and the tenure of member is one year and these are appointed by the MP’s of Lok
Sabha and Rajya Sabha. It looks after the excess expenditure and direct and indirect taxes.
2) Estimates committee – It has 30 members. The tenure is of one year and they are elected by the Lok Sabha MPs. They look after the drought situations and the education with special preference.
3) Public undertakings committee – It consists of 22 members and the tenure is of one year. The Other committee that are involved in this are chemical fertilizers coal and steel agriculture commerce defence external affairs Finance petroleum and natural gas etc.

Functions of Standing Committees –

1) To examine the account verification and the and finance of any account,

2) To scrutinize the account and to audit the report,

3)To examine the accounts of autonomous as well as semi autonomous bodies,

4)Examining the stores and stocks.

Ad hoc committees are formed when they need is applied and gets dissolved when they complete their assigned work. These committees in effect, act as a temporary task force to deal with a particular problem or issue. Most committees after standing are ad hoc committees in the parliamentary committees. Ad Hoc committee is on a temporary basis. They are usually set up in the time limit of 30 days. They have clear agendas and they have focus. Their primary task is to investigate in a particular issue. As it is an investigating committee it calls up for the official papers and witnesses to go through any problem.

Some ad hoc committees are :-

1)Committee on Ethics: It’s tenure is for 1 year having 15 members.

2)Committee on Installation of Portraits/Statues of National leaders and Parliamentarians: It’s duration is about the duration of one Lok Sabha having 12 members. The Government of India has appointed a number of committees ad-hoc committees.

Some of the notable ad-hoc committees are :

• Pre-independence was Rowlatt Committee appointed in 1918.

• After Independence are Srikrishna Committee(2010) for demand of separate statehood.

Sources :

• Wikipedia
• Official portal of GoI
• YouTube

-Neha T