Parliamentary panels reconstituted: Tharoor to head external affairs committee, Channi agriculture panel

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor will head the department-related parliamentary standing committee on External Affairs and former Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi will head the panel on Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.

A bulletin from Lok Sabha on Wednesday night notified the reconstituted parliamentary committees with the incumbent chairpersons retained in all.

There are eight department-related parliamentary standing committees of the Rajya Sabha and 15 of the Lok Sabha. Besides these 23 panels, there are two select committees.

BJP MP Baijayant Panda will chair the select committee on the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Amendment Bill 2025 and Tejaswi Surya will head the select panel on the Jan Vishwas Amendment of Provisions Bill 2025.

Among Rajya Sabha panels, Home committee will again be headed by BJP’s Radha Mohan Das Agrawal; Commerce by TMC’s Dola Sen; Education, Women and Children by Congress’ Digvijay Singh; Industry by DMK’s Tiruchi Siva; Science and Technology by BJP’s Bhubaneshwar Kalita; Transport, Tourism and Culture by NDA partner Sanjay Jha of JDU; Health by SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav; Personnel, Law and Justice by BJP’s Brij Lal, and Agriculture and Animal Husbandry by Charanjit Singh Channi.

Chairpersons of the Lok Sabha’s department-related panels are — BJP’s Nishikant Dubey (IT and Communications); BJP’s Radha Mohan Singh (Defence);

NDA partner Shrirang Appa Barne of Shiv Sena (Energy); Congress’ Shashi Tharoor (External affairs); BJP’s Bhartruhari Mahtab (Finance); DMK’s K Kanomozhi (Consumer Affairs); BJP’s Basvaraj Bommai (Labour, Textiles);

NDA partner Sunil Tatkare of NCP (Petroleum and Natural Gas); BJP’s CM Ramesh (Railways); NDA partner Srinivasulu Reddy of TDP (Housing, Urban Affairs); BJP’s Rajeev Pratap Rudy (Water Resources); TMC’s Kirti Azad (Chemicals and Fertilisers); Congress’ Saptagiri Ulaka (Rural Development); BJP’s Anurag Thakur (Coal, Mines, Steel); BJP’s PC Mohan (Social Justice).