New Delhi: Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Raghav Chadha, who recently shifted political allegiance from the Aam Aadmi Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been appointed as the new chairman of the Upper House’s Committee on Petitions. The high-profile parliamentary appointment follows a fresh reconstitution of the panel by Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan, who nominated ten prominent members of the House to serve on the specialized committee. According to an official notification released by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, the structural changes and nominations came into effect on May 20, 2026.
The freshly reconstituted parliamentary panel comprises a diverse group of lawmakers tasked with examining public petitions addressed to the council. Alongside Chadha, the newly appointed members of the committee include Harsh Mahajan, Gulam Ali, Shambhu Sharan Patel, Mayankkumar Nayak, Masthan Rao Yadav Beedha, Jebi Mather Hisham, Subhasish Khuntia, Rwngwra Narzary, and P. Sandosh Kumar. The committee holds significant institutional weight, serving as a direct link between civil society grievances and legislative review within the parliamentary framework.
In a parallel legislative development issued through a separate secretarial notification on the same day, the Rajya Sabha Chairman nominated newly elected MP Dr. Menaka Guruswamy to a critical joint legislative panel. Guruswamy, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court who assumed office as a Trinamool Congress representative from West Bengal earlier this year, has been formally appointed as a member of the Joint Committee on the Corporate Laws Amendment Bill, 2026. Her legal expertise is expected to guide the panel’s review of corporate compliance structures, while matching parallel appointments from the lower house, where Lok Sabha Speaker om Birla nominated veteran parliamentarian Arvind Ganpat Sawant to the same joint panel.
