What are Cabinet committees, and why is the CCS the most important of them all?

What are the CCS, and other important committees of the Cabinet, including the CCEA (Cabinet committee on economic affairs) and CCPA (Cabinet committee on political affairs)? What is the composition of the Cabinet committees — and their role and functioning in the government apparatus?

What are the various Cabinet committees?

Once the Union Cabinet is sworn in and ministerial portfolios are allocated, the next step would be the formation of the high-profile Cabinet committees. The Prime Minister sets up these committees with selected members of the Cabinet and assigns specific functions to these committees. The Prime Minister may change the numbers of committees, and modify the functions assigned to them.

The membership of each committee varies from three to eight. Usually, only Cabinet ministers are members of these committees. However, it is not unheard of for non-Cabinet ministers to be members or special invitees to committees. If the Prime Minister himself is a member of any such committee, he acts as the head of that committee.

The committees resolve issues and formulate proposals for the consideration of the Cabinet and take decisions on matters assigned to them. The Cabinet is empowered to review such decisions.

The Manmohan Singh government had as many as 12 Cabinet committees, apart from dozens of Groups of Ministers (GoMs) and Empowered Groups of Ministers (EGoMs).

There are eight Cabinet committees at present — the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs, Cabinet Committee on Investment and Growth, Cabinet Committee on Security, Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, Cabinet Committee on Employment & Skill Development, and Cabinet Committee on Accommodation.

The committees on investment and employment were innovations introduced by the Modi government in 2019. All committees except the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation and Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs are headed by the PM.

Why is CCS so important?

With the Prime Minister helming it, the CCS has the ministers for Finance, Defence, Home Affairs and External Affairs as its members. It is responsible for debates, discussions and appointments of/ in the national security bodies. Major decisions with respect to the significant appointments, issues of national security, defence expenditure of India are taken by CCS.

Besides dealing with defence related issues, the CCS also brainstorms on issues relating to law and order and internal security, and policy matters concerning foreign affairs on security-related issues. It also considers matters relating to atomic energy.

The great importance of the CCS is the reason why it is expected that the BJP will resist the pressure from allies, including from crucial ones such as TDP and JDU, to cede any of these important portfolios.

In fact, with all CCS members in Modi’s second term — Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, and S Jaishankar — making an appearance for the Sunday noon tea party at PM’s residence, it is being widely anticipated that there would be a continuity in the CCS.

Have alliance partners been part of the CCS earlier?

The most notable example was of the H D Deve Gowda government of 1996, which came after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s resignation as Prime Minister. Deve Gowda, who was Chief Minister of Karnataka at the time, took oath as Prime Minister on June 1. Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav became Defence Minister, P Chidambaram, who had formed the Tamil Maanila Congress earlier that year, became Finance Minister, and CPI’s Indrajit Gupta became Home Minister.

In 2001, with Vajpayee heading the NDA government, Samata Party founder George Fernandes was appointed the Defence Minister and remained in the post for three years. In fact, as Defence Minister in the BJP-led second and third Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministries (1998–2004), he oversaw the Kargil War and the nuclear tests at Pokhran.

However, the Congress kept all CCS positions in the UPA government, and the BJP had all four of these positions in the Modi governments.