Two crucial parliamentary panels, the standing committees on finance and external affairs, which were headed by Congress MPs in previous Lok Sabha are now chaired by BJP MPs.

The Lok Sabha secretariat updated the details of Parliament's standing committees for the newly constituted House late on Friday night.

BJP MPs Jayant Sinha and P.P. Choudhary will head the panels on finance and external affairs, respectively. In the previous Lok Sabha, Congress' Veerappa Moily and Shashi Tharoor used to head the two committees.

Moily lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Tharoor, who retained his Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat, has now been made the head of the standing committee on information technology.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi who was a member of the panel on external affairs has now been moved to the parliamentary panel on defence, which is headed by Jual Oram.

Trinamul's Derek O'Brien, who was chairing the committee on transport, tourism and culture has been replaced by erstwhile TDP leader T.G. Venkatesh, who recently joined BJP.

O'Brien is now a member of the panel on human resource development, which the BJP's Satyanarayan Jatiya continues to head.

With these changes, the Congress which was earlier heading two committees of the Lok Sabha will now be heading only one. Standing committees are allocated by Lok Sabha Speaker and Rajya Sabha chairman on the recommendation of the government.

Written with PTI reports