Standing Committee on Defence (16th Lok Sabha): Striking Old Notes on Debut

Three months after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was swept to power at the centre in the general elections held in April–May 2014 to the 16th Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament), the Standing Committee on Defence was constituted under the chairmanship of Major General B.C. Khanduri (Retd.), former Chief Minister of the northern state of Uttarakhand and a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the main constituent of the NDA.

The Committee opened its account with a report on the action taken by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on the recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Defence of the 15th Lok Sabha on MoD’s Demands for Grant (DGs) for the year 2013–14. This article examines the new Committee’s approach to looking at the issues that had engaged the attention of the Committee in the past.