New Delhi: Senior Congress leader K C Venugopal will head the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which keeps a close eye on government expenditure, according to the Lok Sabha Secretariat. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla also constituted four other parliamentary panels, including Estimates and Public Undertakings committees which will be chaired by BJP leaders.Public Accounts, Public Undertakings and Estimates committees are the key financial committees of Parliament tasked with keeping a watch on the government’s accounts and the functioning of public sector firms.The Lok Sabha Secretariat issued a bulletin on Friday announcing the constitution of parliamentary committees.The Committee on Welfare of OBCs will be headed by Ganesh Singh of the BJP. His party colleague Faggan Singh Kulaste will head the Committee on Welfare of SCs and STs.BJP leader Sanjay Jaiswal will head the Committee on Estimates while his party colleague Baijayant Panda will chair the Committee on Public Undertakings.The committees have a tenure of one year and have members from both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. They are elected by the two Houses.The PAC is usually headed by a senior Lok Sabha member of the principal opposition party. Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury headed the PAC for five years.Unlike the previous Lok Sabha, committees in the 18th Lok Sabha have taken shape mostly through consensus instead of elections.Besides the PAC, Committee on Public Undertakings, Committee on Estimates, Committee on Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Joint Committee on Office of Profit and Committee on Welfare of Other Backward Classes have been constituted without an election this time.The Lok Sabha speaker is yet to constitute the department-related standing committees which keep an eye on the functioning of various Union ministries and departments.
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