Performance of Departmentally Related Standing Committees (DRSCs) in the 17th Lok Sabha upto Budget Session 2020

The concept of Departmentally Related Standing Committees (DRSCs) was introduced in 1989 to help the Parliament to study the matters closely.  Presently, 24 DRSCs function (16 Lok Sabha Committees and 8 Rajya Sabha Committees).  Each Committee has 30 Members (20 from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha), nominated by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha or the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. It is chaired either by a Lok Sabha or a Rajya Sabha Member, depending on the category of the Committee.

Generally, the Committees take up any topic relating to their Ministry, discuss and present their reports to the Parliament.  They also scrutinise Bills referred to them and ‘Demands for Grant’ of the Ministries concerned.  All their reports are presented to the Parliament.

The performance of the top 3 Committees (From 1.6.2019 to 31.3.2020) is as follows:

Lok Sabha Committees		Rajya Sabha Committees
Committee	Reports presented	Committee	Reports presented
Agriculture	13	Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change	8
Information and Technology	12	Transport, Tourism and Culture	8
Finance	11	Human Resources Department	6

Data source: Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha websites

People are generally aware about the functioning of the Parliament.  But they seldom know about the functioning of the Standing Committees.  The Standing Committees are the real Unsung Heroes.  Every year, PreSense honours the best Standing Committee with the Sansad Ratna Award.  In the 16^th Lok Sabha, the Finance Committee received the Award for presenting the maximum number of reports.  The Finance Committee was chaired by  Dr Veerappa Moily, a Congress Party leader.

The Committee Meetings are not open to the media.  Political parties too cannot issue whip to their Members in the Standing Committees to adopt a particular line.