Rajya Sabha Annual Rejig: 28 Members Shifted Out Of Existing Panels For This Reason

New Delhi: Former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi has come in for Bhupendra Yadav as the chairman of the Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice panel of Parliament following the standing committees’ latest reshuffle on Saturday.

The latest annual rejig also witnessed two top-ranking Opposition leaders — Congress’ Abhishek Singhvi and Trinamool’s Derek O’Brien also being shifted to the home affairs committee. This comes at a time when the Opposition has demanded the removal of the junior minister for home affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra over the Lakhimpur Kheri violence.

The violence killed eight people after a car mowed down protesting farmers in Uttar Pradesh.

According to a senior official, for the first time, the reshuffle saw at least 28 Rajya Sabha members being shifted out of their existing panels owing to poor attendance.

A total of 50 members of the Upper house were placed in new committees, out of the 237 Rajya Sabha members nominated by Chairman Venkaiah Naidu for the 24 department-related standing committees for 2021-22.

“This includes 28 members who had poor attendance in the meetings of committees held during 2020-21. 12 of these 28 members didn’t attend any meeting in the last one year due to Covid-19 or elections,” a senior Rajya Sabha official was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.

There are a total of 24 standing committees with each panel having 11 members of Rajya Sabha and 20 of Lok Sabha.

“All three Shiv Sena members in the Rajya Sabha got new panels. Sanjay Raut moves to External Affairs from Defence, Anil Desai from Coal and Steel to Commerce and Priyanka Chaturvedi from Commerce to Transport, Tourism and Culture. All 3 had good attendance last year,” another official was quoted as saying by HT.

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