Parliamentary committees in depth (PAC, Estimates, DRSCs)
A deep dive into India's financial and departmentally related standing committees—PAC, Estimates, Public Undertakings and the 24 DRSCs—their composition, mandate and limits.
Why this matters for the exam
Parliamentary committees are a perennial UPSC favourite because they sit at the intersection of three Mains GS-2 themes: parliamentary oversight of the executive, the separation/blending of powers, and the working of accountability institutions. They are described as a 'mini-Parliament' precisely because they let the legislature scrutinise the executive away from the floor's partisan theatre—a point the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2nd ARC) and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC, 2002) both pressed.
The PYQ footprint is heavy. UPSC has asked directly: 'Department-related Standing Committees... have led to reduced oversight of the executive by the Parliament. Comment' (Mains GS-2). It has asked candidates to distinguish the roles of the Public Accounts Committee and the Estimates Committee, and to evaluate whether committees are losing relevance as fewer Bills are referred to them. Prelims regularly tests crisp factual hooks: the membership numbers, which House the chairperson comes from, why a minister cannot be a member, and which committee examines the report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG).
The constitutional and procedural anchors you must cite. Committees draw authority from Articles 105 (powers and privileges) and 118 (each House makes its own rules of procedure), and exist under the Rules of Procedure of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha rather than by name in the Constitution's text—except where the Constitution references specific instruments such as the CAG's reports under Article 151. Memorise the financial trio (PAC, Estimates, Public Undertakings), the timeline (PAC 1921, Estimates 1950, COPU 1964), and the watershed of 1993, when 17 Department-Related Standing Committees (DRSCs) were created, later expanded to 24 (16 serviced by the Lok Sabha, 8 by the Rajya Sabha).
How it is tested. Expect (i) a Prelims MCQ pinning a single fact—e.g., 'post-audit vs. pre-audit' for PAC, or that the Estimates Committee draws all 30 members from the Lok Sabha only; (ii) a Mains analytical question on declining legislative scrutiny, asking you to marshal data (the steep fall in the share of Bills referred to committees across recent Lok Sabhas) and remedies; and (iii) an essay-adjacent demand to weigh executive efficiency against accountability. Retain the high-yield contrasts—PAC looks backward at spent money; Estimates looks forward at proposed economy; DRSCs cut across the budget, Bills and policy of assigned ministries. A candidate who can quote the membership, the chair convention, and one concrete instance (such as PAC's examination of the 2G spectrum CAG report, 2010-11) writes a top-decile answer.