Parliamentary panel holds discussion over global response of COVID-19 outbreak

New Delhi: Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs on Monday held a meeting to discuss global response on Covid-19 pandemic, India's contribution during the crisis and the way forward to deal with the disease which has infected a total of 1,02,07,871 people in India, taking the tally of fatalities to 1,47,901 so far.

Concluding evidence presented by the representatives of the Ministries of External Affairs, Health and Family Welfare and Civil Aviation on Covid-19 or coronavirus were also discussed in the over half-an-hour meeting here inside Parliament premises.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and an MP from Pali in Rajasthan, P.P. Chaudhary, who is the chairman of the committee, held the meeting here amid expectations that Covid-19 vaccines will be available in India hopefully this weekend.

The 30-member committee, including 21 members of Lok Sabha and nine from Rajya Sabha, met in the afternoon.

The committee members from the Lok Sabha include Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Abhishek Banerjee, Kalyan Banerjee, Kunwar Pushpendra Singh Chandel, Dileshwar Kamait, Suresh Kumar Kashyap, Preneet Kaur, Meenakashi Lekhi, Goddeti Madhavi, Srinivas Reddy Manne, P.C. Mohan, Chandrani Murmu, Ritesh Pandey, K.C. Patel, N.K. Premachandran, Navneet Ravi Rana, Soyam Babu Rao, Ram Swaroop Sharma, Rebati Tripura and Poonam (Mahajan) Vajendla Rao.

Abdul Wahab, K.J. Alphons, Jaya Bachchan, Misha Bharti, P. Chidambaram, Swapan Dasgupta, Ranjan Gogoi, Shamsher Singh Manhas and Kapil Sibal are from Rajya Sabha.