Standing Committee on External Affairs
committee of Indian Parliament for legislative oversight
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs is a department related standing committee (DRSC) of selected members of parliament, constituted by the Parliament of India, for the purpose of legislative oversight of the foreign policy, and decision making of the Ministry of External Affairs. It is one of the 24 DRSCs that have been mandated with the task of ministry specific oversight.
The committee is currently chaired by MP Shashi Tharoor since 26 September 2024.
Current Composition
Each of the committees have 31 members – 21 from Lok Sabha and 10 from Rajya Sabha. These members are to be nominated by the Speaker of Lok Sabha or the Chairman of Rajya Sabha respectively. The term of office of these committees does not exceed one year. These committees are serviced either by Lok Sabha secretariat or the Rajya Sabha secretariat, depending on who has appointed the chairman of that committee.
Following are the members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs.
Keys: BJP (14) INC (4) SP (2) AITC (2) CPIM (2) DMK (1) SS(UBT) (1) YSRCP (1) RJD (1) IUML (1) AIMIM (1) = 31 members
Lok Sabha members
Rajya Sabha members
Chairpersons
Chairpersons of the committee (1993–present)
Reports published
As part of its oversight process, the committee has published quite a number of reports over the course of its existence. The committee has published a total of 87 reports from 1993 to 2010.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Standing Committee on External Affairs” as committee of Indian Parliament for legislative oversight. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as committee of Indian Parliament for legislative oversight. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q110654594. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024, 1993 and 2010.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Standing Committee on External Affairs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.