The first meeting of the new standing committee for home affairs was chaired on Wednesday by Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rajya Sabha member Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, with the agenda to select the subjects to be discussed by the panel throughout its term.
Sources said some members of Parliament wanted discussions on multiple issues, especially concerning the safety and security of the public. But they were informed by the chair and several senior MPs who have been part of the committee for a long time that many of the subjects have been discussed threadbare and reports submitted to Parliament in the past.
The most important point on which many of the members seem to agree has been rising cybercrimes across the country, resulting in various scams, especially financial ones. The members have been keen on having a thorough discussion on how to stop this menace which impacts the public at large. The sources said that the chairman assured the members that this would be taken up on priority.
Among the crucial issues that some members raised was the lack of security for women with the failure to control atrocities against them in many states. Some of the MPs expressed concerns about rape incidents that have been witnessed across the country. One example was the rape and murder of a doctor in West Bengal, which has been an ongoing issue leading to doctors going on strike for several weeks.
Apart from this, some members also brought up the need to control illegal migrants entering the country. While some BJP MPs have on several occasions brought up the issue of Rohingyas entering the country illegally through states like West Bengal and Jharkhand, those present in the meeting on Wednesday also said that the matter needed to be discussed with utmost seriousness. They believe that not only is this a serious threat to the demography of these regions, but it can also have other impacts, including an economic fallout for locals and in some cases law and order concerns.
The other issue that the members wanted to discuss was the modernisation of police and police-related reforms.
The members were informed that in the next committee meeting, which will be held within a fortnight, home secretary Govind Mohan himself would appear before the panel to answer multiple queries that the MPs may want to raise.
The committee, which has been constituted recently, has not just a new chairman in Radha Mohan Das Agarwal but a host of new members. Among those who continue to be on the committee from the last time are the likes of Derek O’Brien of the Trinamool Congress and Neeraj Shekhar from the BJP. In the last term, the committee also had former home minister P Chidambaram as its member.
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