NEW DELHI: Eight members of Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar’s private workers have been “attached” to twenty House committees that got here beneath the ambit of Rajya Sabha this week, a transfer that drew criticism from opposition benches, at the same time as Dhankhar himself asserted that the decision was taken after “multi-layered consultations”.
Dhankhar’s officers on particular responsibility (OSDs) Rajesh N Naik, Akhil Choudhary, Abhyuday Singh Shekhawat, Dinesh D, Kaustubh Sudhakar Bhalekar, personal secretary (PS) Sujeet Kumar, extra PS Sanjay Verma and senior PS Aditi Chaudhary have been deployed to 12 standing committees and eight department-related standing committees beneath Rajya Sabha.

The RS inner order mentioned the appointments have been made “with immediate effect and until further orders”. These officers have been tasked with helping committees of their work, which incorporates attending conferences which might be confidential in nature.
Even as specialists and opposition events questioned the necessity or logic for the appointments, Dhankhar whereas addressing a guide launch on Thursday, defended the transfer. “You know the importance of committees. I got inputs from number of members and chairmen of committees to do something affirmative to improve productivity. So, I sharpened the human resources attached to the committees. I put research-oriented, knowledgeable people so that they can help the committee members to optimise output and performance,” he mentioned.

The Vice President and RS chairman additionally lamented the “false narrative” constructed across the appointments. “A narrative has been set afloat by sections of media that the chairman has appointed his own members to the committees. Has anyone even checked the facts? Committees comprise members of Parliament. It is their exclusive domain. I am terribly upset and concerned what our editors are doing. Can you engage in such kind of narrative which is based on falsehood? And you don’t care to check the truth. I have acted because the chairmen and members had come up to me and I’m doing it after multi-layered consultations,” he mentioned.

When requested, officers from the VP’s workplace didn’t make clear when or with who these consultations had been carried out.
Opposition MPs, together with Congress’s Jairam Ramesh, whereas questioning the “logic or necessity” of the transfer, denied being consulted. RJD’s Manoj Jha, alternatively, known as the appointments “fundamentally opposed” to the concept and construction of the standing committees.
“The RS chairman has said that his controversial move to have his staff attached to various committees was after consultations with the respective chairpersons. I chair a standing committee and I can categorically say I wasn’t consulted at all,” Ramesh mentioned.

The Chairman of the Rajya Sabha has mentioned that his controversial transfer to have his workers hooked up to varied Committe… https://t.co/fuY3h0zAe6

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) 1678375155000

Legislative specialists instructed TOI there isn’t a previous precedent of the non-public workers of the RS chairman being appointed to help parliamentary committees. However, there have been written suggestions, previously, to attract officers from the Library, Reference, Research, Documentation and Information Service (LARRDIS) – the educational wing of RS Secretariat – to help with committee work. None of Dhankhar’s private workers are from LARRDIS.

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