Better late than never: the government of India has finally set up Parliamentary Standing Committees, with Congress MP Shashi Tharoor heading the committee on Information Technology. In the last term of Parliament, the committee had been chaired by Anuragh Thakur, who is currently the Minister of State for Finance. The last committee looked into issues including Net Neutrality* and started discussions on Privacy, but reports on neither subject were submitted or published.
Parliamentary Standing Committees are bipartisan committees, with representatives from both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. IT Minister RS Prasad has said that the Personal Data Protection Bill may be sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, or to a “select committee”.
Tharoor is a great choice: Tharoor is a great pick for heading this committee, given that he has often raised technology policy issues in Parliament, including submitting a Private Members Bill related to Privacy and data protection, submitting a bill for regulation of online gambling in India, and asking for a review of Internet Shutdown rules. He hasn’t been very keen on TikTok, though.
Other noteworthy inclusions:
- Mahua Moitra, who had petitioned the Supreme Court against the Government’s social media communications hub, and raised questions about delays in the data protection bill.
- Dr. Subhash Chandra, the Chairman of the Essel Group, the media conglomerate that also owns the Zee media group, and the streaming service Zee5.
Who is in the committee?
From the Lok Sabha:
- Locket Chatterjee
- Karti P. Chidambaram
- Sunny Deol
- Dr. Nishikant Dubey
- Vijay Kumar Dubey
- Choudhary Memboob Ali Kaiser
- Raksha Nikhil Khadse
- Dr Sukanta Majumdar
- Dhairyasheel Sambhajirao Mane
- Mahua Moitra
- P. R. Natarajan
- Santosh Pandey
- Nisith Pramanik
- Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore
- Dr. Gaddam Ranjith Reddy
- MVV Satyanarayana
- Sanjay Seth
- L.S. Tejasvi Surya
- T.Sumathy (A) Thamizahachi Thangapandian
- Dr. Shashi Tharoor
- Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma
From the Rajya Sabha
- Dr. Anil Agrawal
- Dr. Subhash Chandra
- Y.S. Chowdhary
- Suresh Gopi
- Md. Nadimul Haque
- Dyed Nasir Hussain
- Dr. Narendra Jadhav
- D. Kupendra Reddy
- Ronald Sapa Tlau
- Beni Prasad Verma
Disclosure: I had deposed before the committee on Net Neutrality
