Congress picks Singhvi as chief of House commerce panel

NEW DELHI: Congress has nominated senior lawyer and MP Abhishek Singhvi as chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on commerce, days after the party was stripped of the chairmanship of two key committees – home (in Rajya Sabha) and IT (in Lok Sabha), and given commerce.

Singhvi was heading the panel on home while Shashi Tharoor was heading the committee on IT.

Besides Singhvi, the party has nominated Digvijaya Singh and Pradeep Bhattacharya as members to the standing committee on home.

Congress informed minister for parliamentary affairs Prahlad Joshi on Thursday. Importantly, the party will soon have to decide on the Leader of the Opposition’s post in the upper House, after the resignation of Mallikarjun Kharge. Kharge, who is frontrunner in the contest for the post of Congress chief, quit in keeping with “one man one post” norm.