Parliamentary committees: JPCs, standing committees and select committees

Why does Parliament need committees?

Because the full House has neither the time nor the setting to examine every Bill and every rupee of spending in detail. Committees are small groups of MPs who study a Bill or a ministry, hear witnesses and report back. Their meetings are “conducted in a closed-door environment”, PRS Legislative Research notes.

What are standing committees?

Permanent committees that watch over ministries and public money. The best known are the 24 Departmentally Related Standing Committees, set up in 1993. Each has 31 members, 21 from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, and is constituted for a one-year term, according to PRS.

There are also financial committees:

• The Public Accounts Committee examines the audit findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General.
• The Estimates Committee has 30 members, all from the Lok Sabha.
• The Committee on Public Undertakings examines public sector companies and has 15 Lok Sabha and seven Rajya Sabha members.

The Standing Committee on Finance, chaired by Bhartruhari Mahtab, reported on the Securities Markets Code, 2025 on 23 July 2026. The Code merges three securities laws into one.

What is a Joint Parliamentary Committee?

A committee of members from both Houses set up for a specific task, usually a single Bill, which ends once it reports. PRS calls such committees “ad hoc”. The Lok Sabha Secretariat explains that the House can decide to refer a Bill “to a Select Committee of the House or a Joint Committee of the two Houses”.

Joint and select committees at work (as of October 2026)

1. 19 Dec 2024One Nation One Election Bills go to a 41-member JPC chaired by P.P. Chaudhary. Deadline now the first day of the last week of the Winter Session 2026.
2. 20 Aug 2025Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill, on removing ministers held in custody, goes to a JPC chaired by Aparajita Sarangi. No report yet.
3. 16 Dec 2025Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, on a single higher education regulator, goes to a JPC chaired by Daggubati Purandeswari. No report yet.
4. 3 Aug 2026JPC on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, chaired by Sudhir Gupta, presents its report.
5. 12 Aug 2026FCRA Amendment Bill goes to a 31-member JPC. Report due in the first week of the Winter Session 2026.

The FCRA committee has 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, ThePrint reported. Its members have not been named in any report we found.

How is a select committee different?

A select committee draws its members from one House only. It is also set up to examine a particular Bill. The Lok Sabha sent the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2025 to a select committee chaired by Baijayant Panda on 12 August 2025. The committee reported on 17 December 2025, and Parliament passed the Bill in March and April 2026, according to PRS.

How does a Bill reach a committee?

Either the House votes to send it, or the Speaker or Chairman refers it. Select and joint committees are created when the House decides to refer a Bill. For the standing committees, PRS says Bills are referred by the Lok Sabha Speaker or the Rajya Sabha Chairman. A Bill already passed by one House can still be sent to a committee by the other.

Referral is not compulsory, and it has become less common. Of the 30 Bills the 17th Lok Sabha referred to committees, 24 went to standing committees, five to joint committees and one to a select committee, PRS says. In the current 18th Lok Sabha, 21% of Bills have been referred so far, against 16% in the 17th.

Standing committees24

Joint committees5

Select committee1

012.525

Where the 17th Lok Sabha sent Bills for scrutiny. Number of Bills referred, by type of committee (2019-24)

Item	Value
Standing committees	24
Joint committees	5
Select committee	1

The 18th Lok Sabha has leaned the other way. Up to the Winter Session of 2025, it had referred 11 of 42 Bills, and only one, the Securities Markets Code, to a standing committee, PRS noted. The Indian Statistical Institute Bill, 2026, referred to a standing committee on 1 September 2026, is the second.

Must the government accept what a committee says?

No. Committee reports advise Parliament; they do not bind it. PRS’s 2019 discussion paper notes that the House is not required to discuss a committee’s recommendations or give reasons for rejecting them. Over the eight years it studied, the government accepted 80% of the Public Accounts Committee’s recommendations and 67% of those from the Committee on Public Undertakings.

What reforms have been suggested?

PRS has argued for referring all Bills to committees, pointing to the UK, where every Bill other than a Money Bill goes to one automatically. Its 2019 paper also suggested making debate on committee reports mandatory, giving committees research staff and expert advisers, and improving attendance. Committee attendance was about 50%, against 84% for sittings of Parliament, the paper found.