The Lok Sabha on Wednesday referred the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026 to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) amid strong objections from the Opposition and the Church to provisions, including retrospective vesting of foreign-funded assets in a government-designated authority.The referral gives the Bill a second layer of scrutiny. But how much difference can a parliamentary committee actually make to a government that has majority membership within it? The history of JPCs offers a more complicated answer.Parliamentary committees were created to address a basic limitation of Parliament itself: the two Houses have limited time to examine an increasingly complex body of legislation and government policy. Smaller committees can spend considerably more time examining a Bill, question officials, hear experts and stakeholders, and examine provisions clause by clause.The committee system is, therefore, not meant to be another forum for the political contest that takes place on the floor of the House. Its underlying philosophy, as described in Rajya Sabha’s literature on the subject, is “influence, not direct control; advise, not command; criticism, not obstruction; scrutiny, not initiative; accountability, not prior approval.”There are several kinds of committees. The Department-related Standing Committees examine the functioning and policies of ministries on an ongoing basis. Financial committees scrutinise government expenditure. Select Committees are constituted by one House to examine a specific Bill, while a JPC has members from both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and is constituted for a specific Bill or issue.Committees can call for persons, papers and records and take evidence, but their recommendations are not binding on the government.Story continues below this adIf the ruling party has a majority, how independent can a JPC be?That is the central limitation of committees. JPC membership broadly reflects the strength of parties in Parliament. Since the ruling party or alliance normally has a majority in the Lok Sabha, it consequently has a majority in a JPC as well. The chairperson is also generally from the government benches. The committee can take decisions by majority; in the event of a tie, the chairperson has a casting vote.But that does not make it meaningless. The Opposition has several tools within the committee: it can demand particular witnesses, question officials, put evidence on record, propose changes to the draft report and, ultimately, if they disagree with the majority, file a dissent note.Also in Explained | Justice Yashwant Varma case: What parliamentary probe panel foundThe question, therefore, is not whether Opposition MPs can be heard, but whether they can change the law.Story continues below this adHere, the record is much less encouraging. Opposition objections are frequently recorded in dissent notes, but it is considerably rarer for an Opposition position to become part of the final legislation, particularly when the Bill concerns a politically central objective of the government.Have JPCs actually changed laws?Yes — but generally by modifying rather than overturning the government’s legislative project.The Stock Market Scam JPC of 2001-02, constituted during the Vajpayee-led NDA government, produced a detailed set of recommendations on regulatory surveillance, settlement systems and coordination between markets regulator SEBI and stock exchanges. The government subsequently reported action on 236 recommendations.The Pesticide Residues JPC of 2004 is another example. It examined allegations of pesticide residues in soft drinks, confirmed unacceptable levels and recommended stringent safety standards and better testing. Its work contributed to subsequent regulatory action and public scrutiny of beverage safety.Story continues below this adAlso Read | US Republican lawmaker calls India’s FCRA Bill an ‘attack on Christians’More recent JPCs examining Bills show a similar pattern of modification.The Multi-State Co-operative Societies (Amendment) Bill, 2022, for instance, emerged from the JPC with changes relating to the composition and functioning of the proposed Cooperative Election Authority and representation mechanisms. The eventual law incorporated many of these recommendations.The Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 similarly retained the government’s broad approach while incorporating some safeguards and clarifications.Story continues below this adThere are also cases where scrutiny contributed to the government abandoning a particular legislative vehicle. The Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, 2017, which contained controversial “bail-in” provisions, was examined by a JPC amid concerns over depositor protection. The government subsequently withdrew the Bill, although public and political opposition also played a role in this.The important point is that a JPC’s value lies in forcing the government to explain, amend, clarify or reconsider parts of a Bill.What about Opposition objections?The Personal Data Protection Bill JPC is perhaps the clearest recent example of Opposition dissent being formally recorded but not prevailing. The committee retained broad exemptions for the government, while Opposition members objected to the exemptions, surveillance safeguards and other provisions. Six members filed dissent notes.The government eventually withdrew the 2019 Bill and introduced a new data protection legislation in 2022. The new law had a substantially different architecture, although it continued to give the government broad exemption powers.Story continues below this adThe Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 also underwent committee scrutiny. The JPC, chaired by BJP MP Rajendra Agrawal, retained the Bill’s central objective of granting citizenship to specified non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Opposition objections on the religious criterion and its implications for Assam and secularism did not alter the central framework, and the 2019 Act broadly followed the government’s original approach.The 2G JPC, constituted under the UPA-II government, is an older illustration of the same problem from the other side of the political spectrum. Chaired by Congress MP P C Chacko, it broadly defended the government’s position on telecom allocation. Opposition members filed dissent notes.The JPC’s conclusions, however, had limited influence on the subsequent legal and political trajectory, which was shaped much more directly by the CAG findings and the Supreme Court’s cancellation of licences.This suggests that the partisan character of JPCs is not unique to the present government. When a government regards an issue as politically important, its majority on the committee can be decisive.Story continues below this adHas the committee system weakened under successive governments?The most striking change is not in the number of JPCs, but in the broader decline in the use of parliamentary committees for Bills.Data from PRS Legislative Research shows that about 60% of Bills were referred to committees in the 14th Lok Sabha (2004-09) and around 71% in the 15th Lok Sabha (2009-14). The figure fell sharply to about 25% in the 16th Lok Sabha (2014-19) and roughly 16% in the 17th Lok Sabha (2019-24). These figures cover referral to committees generally — not just JPCs.The emerging pattern is that routine scrutiny has weakened while JPCs have increasingly been used for particularly contentious pieces of legislation.That makes the FCRA referral significant. The government could have pushed the Bill through Lok Sabha amid din; it has the numbers. Instead, following strong objections, it has chosen a JPC. The committee will now provide a formal forum for stakeholders to put their concerns on record and for the government to decide which of them it is prepared to accommodate.