Congress leader K.C. Venugopal will head the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee. File
| Photo Credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla constituted six new Parliamentary Committees, including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which keeps a close eye on government expenditure, to be headed by senior Congress leader K.C. Venugopal.
The PAC, one of the three key financial committees tasked with keeping a watch on the government’s accounts, is usually headed by a senior Lok Sabha member of the principal Opposition party. Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury headed the PAC for five years. Before him, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has also headed the PAC.
Two other financial committees — the Estimates Committee and the Public Undertakings Committee — will be chaired by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders.
In a bulletin issued on Friday, Sanjay Jaiswal was appointed Chairperson of the Committee on Estimates, and Baijayant Panda made Chairperson of the Committee on Public Undertakings.
The Speaker has appointed Ganesh Singh as Chairperson of the Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes, the bulletin said.
Faggan Singh Kulaste has been appointed Chairperson of the Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
All the above formed committees have a tenure of one year, and have members from both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.
The Lok Sabha Speaker is yet to constitute the 24 departmentally-related Standing Committees, covering under their jurisdiction all the Ministries and Departments of the Government of India.
Unlike the previous Lok Sabha, the committees in the 18th Lok Sabha, formed after the General Election in June 2024, have taken shape mostly through consensus instead of election.