Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla on Thursday constituted a 31-member joint committee of Parliament (JPC) to review the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, more than three weeks after the proposal to send the controversial legislation to a parliamentary panel was accepted in the Lower House.
Party-wise composition of JPC
A Lok Sabha bulletin added that Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker Sanjay Jaiswal, a four-term MP from Bihar, is the chairperson of the panel. The panel has 14 BJP MPs, including Jaiswal and a total of 19 National Democratic Alliance lawmakers. The Telugu Desam Party, Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party have one member each, and the Janata Dal (United) has two members. Three nominated members who had joined the BJP – C Sadanandan Master, former external affairs secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and criminal lawyer Ujjwal Deorao Nikam – are part of the panel.
The Congress has five berths. The Samajwadi Party, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Indian Union Muslim League have one member each. The Trinamool Congress – both of them loyal to Mamata Banerjee – and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) have two members each in the panel. No member of the rebel TMC group found a place.
Jaiswal thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Birla. “Heartfelt thanks for this important responsibility,” he said.
This will be the 19th joint committee formed on controversial bills since 2014 and the ninth since 2024.
The FCRA controversy
On August 12, the Lok Sabha referred the FCRA amendment bill to a JPC for an extensive review after multiple stakeholders, including church bodies, objected to the legislation’s provisions that allowed a Centre-appointed authority to take over assets created through foreign donations if the organisation failed to retain its FCRA license.
First introduced in the budget session but held back at the time, the bill triggered major controversy with the Opposition, several church delegations and three CMs of Christian-majority states raising concerns.
The amendments establish a designated authority for “a comprehensive framework for vesting, supervision, management and disposal of foreign contribution and assets, including provisional and permanent vesting.” A provision stated that the government can appoint a “designated authority” to take over, manage, or sell assets created from foreign funds by a non-governmental organisation (NGO) whose licence under FCRA was cancelled, suspended, or simply not renewed.
The bill plans to do away with section 15 of the current act that limits the scope of the authority to manage the activities of the organisation, utilise foreign contribution or dispose of the assets created out of it, in case adequate funds are not available for running such an activity.
The panel has 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Upper House.
Along with Jaiswal, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Tejasvi Surya, Kamlesh Jangde, Mukeshkumar Chandrakaant Dalal, Nishikant Dubey, Vishnu Dayal Ram, Ananta Nayak and Arvind Dharmapuri belong to the BJP from the Lok Sabha. C Sadanandan Master, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Ujjwal Deorao Nikam, Sat Paul Sharma and Alka Gurjar are members of the ruling party from the Rajya Sabha.
The Congress lawmakers include Anto Antony, Captain Viriato Fernandes, Md Hamdullah Sayeed, Kali Charan Munda and Christopher Manickam. Zia Ur Rehman of the SP, TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee and Menaka Guruswamy, JD(U)’s Kaushalendra Kumar and Sanjay Jha, and DMK’s A Raja and P Wilson are also part of the panel.
