Parliamentary Committees — The Foundation, Each Committee, and the Bills of 2024–26

Imagine you are running a house of 788 people.

Lok Sabha has 543 members. Rajya Sabha has 245. Together, that is 788 elected representatives sitting in one Parliament. Every year, this Parliament has to do a lot of work:

• Pass new laws
• Change old laws
• Approve the entire budget of the country (lakhs of crores of rupees)
• Discuss national issues — from farmers' problems to foreign policy to defence
• Question ministers on their work
• Debate scandals, failures, disasters
• Look into how public money was actually spent
• Review the working of every ministry

Now here is the honest truth. Parliament sits for only around 55 to 70 days in a year. That is less than three months. In those few days, all 788 people are supposed to seriously discuss and decide everything above.

Practically, can this happen? Let us take one small example.

Suppose the government brings a new law — say, a Data Protection Bill. This Bill has 90 clauses. Each clause has technical language, cross-references, definitions, exceptions. Some clauses deal with cyber security. Some with encryption. Some with children's data. Some with fines for companies.

If this Bill is discussed on the floor of Lok Sabha, what will happen?

• A few senior MPs will speak — maybe 15 to 20 people.
• Each will get 5 to 10 minutes.
• Most will speak on the political angle, not the technical clauses.
• The Bill will get passed in a day or two.
• Ninety clauses, 500-plus MPs, two days — serious scrutiny becomes impossible.

So somewhere along the way, a solution was needed. And that solution is the Parliamentary Committee system.

The idea is very simple, actually.

If 788 people cannot examine a Bill in detail, then take a small group of MPs — say 20 or 30 — put them in a room, give them time, give them experts to consult, and let them go through the Bill line by line. When they finish, they submit a report to Parliament with their recommendations.

Then Parliament, when it takes up the Bill on the floor, already has the benefit of that detailed examination. Debate becomes better. Amendments become smarter. Bad clauses get flagged before they become law.

That is it. A committee is just Parliament in miniature form — same members, same authority, but smaller, focused, and working behind closed doors where political drama takes a back seat.

One thing to understand — most committee meetings are not open to the public or the media. No cameras. No live telecast. No press briefings during meetings.

Why? Is Parliament not supposed to be transparent?

Here is the thinking. When cameras are on, MPs perform. They speak for their voters, their party, their state. They score political points. They oppose for the sake of opposing. They agree for the sake of agreeing. This is normal human behaviour — nobody wants to look weak on TV.

But when the cameras are switched off, and the same MPs are sitting in a small room with a technical Bill in front of them, something shifts. They start asking real questions. They admit when they do not understand something. They accept expert opinions. Opposition and ruling party members actually talk to each other. Sometimes they even agree.

That is why committees, at their best, produce better work than the floor of Parliament can. Not because the MPs are different people, but because the setting is different.

Of course, this ideal does not always work. Political fights do enter committees too. But the design is meant to reduce theatre and increase thought.

Now, if committees are so important, where does their authority come from? Are they mentioned in the Constitution?

Interesting question. The Constitution of India does not directly create parliamentary committees. You will not find a chapter called "Committees" in it.

But the Constitution does two things that make committees possible.

Article 105 gives Members of Parliament certain privileges and powers when they are doing parliamentary work. Whether on the floor or in a committee, MPs have freedom of speech, protection from court cases for what they say inside, and so on. So a committee meeting is protected under the same umbrella as a Parliament session.

Article 118 says that each House of Parliament can make its own rules of procedure. That is, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha can decide how they want to run their business. And under these rules, both Houses have created the committee system.

So the constitutional logic is: the Constitution empowers Parliament to make its own rules; Parliament used that power to build committees; hence committees are legitimate creations of Parliament, backed indirectly by the Constitution.

The committee system in India is not new. It actually goes back to the British time.

The Public Accounts Committee, which is the oldest committee, was created way back in 1921 — under the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. That was 26 years before Independence. So even the British colonial government felt the need for a committee to check how public money was being spent.

After Independence, more committees were added slowly — the Estimates Committee in 1950, the Committee on Public Undertakings in 1964, and so on.

But the biggest reform came in 1993. Until then, most committees dealt with specific issues — finance, petitions, privileges. There was no committee-based system to examine Bills and ministry work in a structured way.

In 1993, Parliament created the Departmentally Related Standing Committees (DRSCs) — 17 of them to begin with, expanded to 24 in 2004 — one committee mapped to each cluster of ministries. Suddenly, every Bill introduced in Parliament could be sent to the relevant committee. Every ministry's budget could be examined in detail. This was a big jump for legislative scrutiny in India.

So when someone asks "when did the modern committee system really begin?" — the answer is 1993.

Now that we know why committees exist, let us understand how they are organised. All parliamentary committees fall into two families.

Family 1 — Standing Committees (the permanent staff). Think of these as the permanent staff of a house. They are always there. Every year, their members are refreshed — this is called reconstitution, where old members leave and new members join, but the committee itself continues. Their work is regular, ongoing, year after year.

Examples: PAC, Estimates Committee, DRSCs, Business Advisory Committee, Rules Committee.

Key feature: even though members change every year, the committee as an institution never dies. It is like a chair in an office — the person sitting on it changes, but the chair remains.

Family 2 — Ad-hoc Committees (the temporary task force). Now imagine you need to organise a wedding. You gather your relatives, form a "wedding committee", divide the work, run the wedding, and once it is over the committee is dissolved. No wedding, no committee.

Ad-hoc committees work the same way. They are formed for a specific task or Bill. Once the task is done and the report is submitted, they automatically dissolve. Their existence is tied to their assignment.

Examples: Select Committee (for one specific Bill in one House), Joint Parliamentary Committee (for a specific Bill or scandal, involving both Houses).

Key feature: ad-hoc means "for this purpose only". Once the purpose is served, curtains down.

Feature	Standing Committee	Ad-hoc Committee
Nature	Permanent institution	Temporary task force
Duration	Continues year after year	Dissolves after report
Members	Reconstituted every year	Fixed for the assignment
Purpose	Ongoing scrutiny of a broad area	One specific issue or Bill
Example	PAC, DRSC on Home Affairs	JPC on the Waqf Bill, JPC on ONOE

Keep this frame in mind. Every committee you will read about falls into one of these two boxes.