New Delhi, Jan 10 (PTI) Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has made a renewed push for virtual meetings of parliamentary standing committees as several such deliberations were affected on Monday after over 400 parliament secretariat staff tested positive for Covid.

“I requested Chairman of the Rajya Sabha on the last day of the Winter Session to allow online meetings of Standing Committees. And yet again this was disallowed,” Ramesh, the Rajya Sabha member and Chairman of the Standing Committee on Science and Technology, said on Twitter.

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“Now, important Committee meetings are being put off. I simply cannot understand why online meetings cannot be held,” he said.

Earlier, during the first and second waves of Covid, meetings of the standing committees had been called off.

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Ramesh and Chairpersons of the standing committees on Home affairs and IT, Anand Sharma and Shashi Tharoor respectively, too had called for virtual meetings of parliamentary committees.

Parliament secretariat officials said that the permission for virtual meetings of parliamentary committees had been denied as such deliberations were confidential and rules would have to be changed to allow them.

Over 400 Parliament staff have tested positive for Covid during random testing. Among those who tested positive are 65 from the Rajya Sabha, 200 from the Lok Sabha and 133 belong to allied services.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)