Congress MP Rahul Gandhi retains his membership of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence, while actor-politician and the BJP’s first-time parliamentarian Kangana Ranaut has been assigned to the committee on Information Technology, or IT, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat said in a notification issued Thursday.

Mr Gandhi, who is also Leader of the Opposition in the Lower House, was a member of the Defence Committee in the previous Lok Sabha too. The committee will be chaired by BJP MP Radha Mohan Singh. The Congress has been given the chair of four committees, including the one for External Affairs, which will be led by its former Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor.

The Congress will also lead the committees on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports (to be chaired by Digvijaya Singh), Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Food Processing (ex -Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi), and Rural and Panchayati Raj (Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka). Seven-time MP and ex-Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has not been named.

Members from the ruling BJP will chair key committees, including Defence, Finance, Home, and Coal, Mines, and Steel, as well as Communications and IT, of which Ms Ranaut is a member. Home Affairs will be led by Radha Mohan Das Agrawal. Bhartruhari Mahtab, who served as Pro-Tem Speaker, will lead the prestigious Standing Committee on Finance.

Former union ministers Anurag Thakur and Rajiv Pratap Rudy will lead the committees on Coal, Mines and Steel, and Water Resources, while Nishikant Dubey gets the Comms and IT post.

READ | Parliament Standing Committees Formed, Rahul Gandhi On Defence Panel 

In the previous Lok Sabha Mr Dubey and the Congress’ Shashi Tharoor had a bitter spat over social media giant Facebook’s rules for hate speech on its platform, which led to the BJP MP replacing the Congress leader as the committee head in 2022.

Among other opposition parties and leaders, the Samajwadi Party’s Jaya Bachchan joins fellow actor Ms Ranaut in the Comms and IT committee. Priyanka Chaturvedi, from the Shiv Sena group led by ex-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, joins the two of them.

Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra – whose disqualification from the last Lok Sabha made headlines – is also on that committee. Tiruchi Siva and Kanimozhi of Tamil Nadu’s DMK, will chair Industry and Consumer Affairs, and Food and Public Distribution.

Several allies of the BJP – which won the April-June general election thanks to 53 seats from its National Democratic Alliance partners – have been given leadership of one committee each. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar’s JDU will lead Housing and Urban Affairs, and Transport, Tourism, and Culture.

These two parties together won 28 Lok Sabha seats.

Ahead of the election in Maharashtra later this year, the BJP’s state allies – the Shiv Sena faction of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the NCP group of his deputy, Ajit Pawar – are also named. Leaders from their parties will helm the committees on Energy and Petroleum and Natural Gas panel.

Each department-related standing committees – which has representation from across party lines – acts as ‘mini parliaments’ and keeps a tab on the functioning of their related ministries.

Each committee is a combination of members from both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha.

With input from agencies

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UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday backed India for a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), days after US President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron made the same pitch. Addressing the general debate of the United Nations General Assembly’s seventy-ninth session in New York, Mr Starmer said the UNSC has to change to become a “more representative body, willing to act – not paralysed by politics”.

At present, the UNSC comprises five permanent members and 10 non-permanent member countries which are elected for a two-year term by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The five permanent members are Russia, the UK, China, France, and the United States, which have the power to veto any substantive resolution.

“We want to see permanent African representation on the Council, Brazil, India, Japan, and Germany as permanent members, and more seats for elected members as well,” Mr Starmer said.

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Earlier on Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron had also voiced strong support for India’s inclusion as a permanent member of the UNSC.

“As long as we have a Security Council that is blocked, I would say, reciprocally according to the interests of each party, we will have difficulty moving forward. So let’s just make these United Nations more effective, first by perhaps making them more representative. That is why France, and I repeat here, is in favor of the Security Council being expanded,” he told the UN General Assembly.

“Germany, Japan, India, and Brazil should be permanent members, as well as two countries that Africa will decide to represent it,” he added.

French President @EmmanuelMacron reiterates France’s call for a reform of the UN Security Council that would include a permanent seat for India🇮🇳 during his address at #UNGA79 🇺🇳:@franceonu @francediplo_EN @MEAIndia pic.twitter.com/0cIPxbWM0i

— French Embassy in India 🇫🇷🇪🇺 (@FranceinIndia) September 26, 2024

Last week, Joe Biden had also vouched for India as a permanent member of the UNSC.

During his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his home in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, Mr Biden said that the US supports initiatives to reform global institutions to reflect India’s important voice, including permanent membership for New Delhi in a reformed UN Security Council.

I thank President Biden for hosting me at his residence in Greenville, Delaware. Our talks were extremely fruitful. We had the opportunity to discuss regional and global issues during the meeting. @JoeBiden pic.twitter.com/WzWW3fudTn

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 21, 2024

India has argued for decades that it deserves to be a member of the UNSC. New Delhi has said that the 15-nation council founded in 1945 is not fit for purpose in the 21st Century and does not reflect contemporary geo-political realities.

India last sat at the UN high table as a non-permanent member in 2021-22.

ALSO READ | 4 Key Obstacles To India Joining UN Security Council With Veto Power

At the ‘Summit of the Future’ on Sunday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had also warned that the 15-nation UNSC, which he described as “outdated” and whose authority is eroding, will eventually lose all credibility unless its composition and working methods are reformed.