Posted on

Ranjan Gogoi, Jyotiraditya Scindia Nominees to Rajya Sabha House Panels

Ex- chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, and BJP turncoat leader Jyotiraditya Scindia were nominated to key Rajya Sabha house panels.

Scindia became member of the Parliamentary Committee on Human Resource Development (HRD), while Gogoi was a lone nomination for the Committee on External Affairs.

Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday nominated them to various parliamentary standing committees, a day after administering the oath.

Earlier, the Rajya Sabha election of Scindia and Gogoi was mired in controversies. While the previous CJI’s nomination to the Upper House by the govt was seen as a blow to the independence of the judiciary, Scindia along side several MLAs from Madhya Pradesh defeated the Congress, resulting in the collapse of Kamal’s government.

Other nominees include Congress members Digvijaya Singh and Mallikarjun Kharge have been nominated to the Urban Development and Commerce Committees respectively. NCP leader Sharad Pawar has been made a member of the Defense Committee.

Former Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha M. Thambi Durai is on the HRD committee, and former vice-chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh is on the panel on agriculture.

Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, who was sworn in as a Rajya Sabha member, has been nominated to the committee in Railways.

Vinay P Sahasrabuddhe was appointed as the chairman of the Human Resource Development Committee after the termination of Satyanarayana Jatia’s membership.

In total, Naidu has nominated 65 members in separate committees, including filling some vacancies by sitting members. Ramdas Athawale, being a minister, wasn’t nominated to any committee.

Others nominated in various parliamentary committees include Bhubaneswar Kalita (HRD), G.K. Vasan (HRD), Subrata Bakshi, Ram Chander Jangra, Alla Ayodhya Rami Reddy and Sumer Singh Solanki (all urban development); Priyanka Chaturvedi, Deepak Prakash, Mausam Noor (all commerce); K.T.S. Tulsi, Nabam Rebia, J.M. Lokhandwala, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Ajit Kumar Bhuyan, Muzibulla Khan (all energy); Dinesh Trivedi (home affairs); and Udayan Raje Bhonsle, Narahari Ameen and Phulo Devi Netam (all railways).

Prem Chand Gupta and Rajeev Satav for the committee on defence, Tiruchi Siva, and K.C. Venugopal for the Committee on Transport, Tourism, and Culture, and the Committee on Coal and Steel to Shibu Soren and Mopidevi Venkataramana Rao.

Background 

Indian Parliament has 24 standing committees of which eight are headed by Rajya Sabha members while the remaining 16 are led by lawmakers from the Lok Sabha. Every member is entitled to be a member of a standing committee. 

Posted on

Bypolls to two Parliament seats: EC

It was announced on Thursday by the Election Commission of India, the bypolls for two Rajya Sabha seats. The bypolls for same are to be held on 26 August.

One seat was vacated by Shri Madanlal Saini, the BJP MLA who passed away. His term was supposed to end on April 3, 2024. While the other bypoll is for the seat vacated by Samajwadi Party’s Neeraj Shekhar who joined BJP. His session was to end on November 25, 2020.

The Election Commission of India said that the counting of votes will be done on the evening of August 26.

Posted on

BJP fields External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar as its nominee Rajya Sabha by-elections from Gujarat

External affairs minister S Jaishankar has filed his nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha poll from Gujarat, scheduled on 5 July. The move came hours after Dr Jaishankar, a career diplomat, formally joined the party in the presence of BJP working president JP Nadda.

BJP declared the names late on Monday night as its candidates for the two Upper House seats.

A retired IFS officer of 1977-batch, Jaishankar was a surprise inclusion in the Narendra Modi government. After his induction in the Union cabinet, Jaishankar was required to get elected to Parliament in six months’ time.

Jaishankar, who replaced BJP leader Sushma Swaraj as the External Affairs Minister, is regarded as a close aide of the Prime Minister and his “crisis manager” on foreign affairs. He had served as the Foreign Secretary during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term as Prime Minister.

The last date of submitting nomination papers is 25 June, while scrutiny of papers would be conducted on 26 June and the last date of withdrawal is 28 June.

Posted on

SC issues notice on separate Gujarat Rajya Sabha bypolls

Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the Election Commission (EC) on a Gujarat Congress leader’s plea for simultaneous by-elections to two Rajya Sabha seats.

The two seats which fell vacant due to the election of Smriti Irani and Amit Shah to the Lok Sabha. Both had been elected to the Upper House from Gujarat in 2017.

A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Suya Kant asked the Commission to file response on why simultaneous polls for the two Rajya Sabha seats could not be conducted as pleaded by the petitioner.

On 15 June, the EC announced in a press note that the by-elections for the vacant Rajya Sabha seats will be held on 5 July. If more than one candidates remain in the fray, polling will be held separately on July 5 between 9 am and 4 pm. Results will be declared at 5 pm the same day.

Senior advocate Vivek Tankha appearing for the Gujarat Congress MLA Paresh Dhanani argued that the notice of the Election Commission issued on 15 June is in violation of the provisions of RPA.