Parliamentary panel on home affairs meets for record 5 hours on Covid management

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs set a record on Thursday by discussing various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its handling in the National Capital Territory of Delhi for almost five hours without a break. Officials said several witnesses were heard on the impact of the pandemic. They added that this was the longest meeting of the panel without a break so far.

The committee, chaired by Rajya Sabha member Anand Sharma of the Congress, also set another record by holding two successive meetings of more than four hours each to discuss the issue. The last meeting of the panel, also on the pandemic, had also lasted for over four hours.

The officials said this was the third meeting of the committee during this intersession period of Parliament and it has so far spent 12 hours and 11 minutes discussing the pandemic with various stakeholders. At Thursday’s meeting, the handling of the pandemic in the NCT of Delhi was discussed at length, following a detailed presentation by Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Kumar Dev.

Additional Secretary, Union Home Ministry Govind Mohan also participated in the deliberations. The committee also interacted with Union secretaries Debashis Panda (Department of Financial Services) and Sudhanshu Pandey (Food and Public Distribution System), besides representatives of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), National Statistical Survey Office (NSSO) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).

At the earlier meetings of the committee, the Union secretaries of Home Affairs and Micro, Medium and Small Enterprises, senior officials of the Union health ministry, Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Director of the AIIMS, Delhi and representatives of MSME organisations appeared as witnesses, among others, the officials said.