The Rajya Sabha Secretariat said in a notification on Thursday that actor-politician and BJP lawmaker Kangana Ranaut has been assigned to the committee on information technology, or IT, while Congress MP Rahul Gandhi continues to serve on the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence.
In the previous Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, who is currently the Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, served on the Defence Committee. BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh will serve as the committee’s chair. Four committee chairs have been assigned to the Congress, with its former Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor chairing the committee on External Affairs.
In addition, the Congress will head the committees on agriculture, animal husbandry, and food processing (led by former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi), women, children, youth, and sports (to be chaired by Digvijaya Singh), and rural and Panchayati raj (Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka). Sonia Gandhi, a seven-time MP and former head of the Congress, is not identified.
Important committees such as Defence, Finance, Home, Coal, Mines, and Steel, and Communications and IT, of which Ms Kangana Ranaut is a member, will be chaired by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Radha Mohan Das Agrawal will be in charge of home affairs. Pro-Tem Speaker Bhartruhari Mahtab will chair the esteemed Standing Committee on Finance.
The committees on coal, mines and steel, and water resources will be chaired by former union ministers Anurag Thakur and Rajiv Pratap Rudy, with Nishikant Dubey appointed to head communications and information technology.
Following a fierce dispute over Facebook’s policies on hate speech on its platform during the previous Lok Sabha, Mr. Dubey and Congressman Shashi Tharoor were replaced as the head of the committee in 2022 by a BJP MP.
Along with other opposition groups and leaders, Jaya Bachchan of the Samajwadi Party and fellow actor Kangana Ranaut are members of the Communications and IT committee. Joining the two is Priyanka Chaturvedi, a member of the Shiv Sena party, which is led by the former chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray.