Lok Sabha speaker blocks Congress MP Sudhakaran’s query on rising communalism in the country

Questions on rising communalism and National Security Council’s threat assessment on religious garments worn by students asked by Congress MP from Kerala K Sudhakaran have been disallowed by the Lok Sabha Speaker.

Congress’ Kerala unit president K Sudhakaran had asked questions specifically at the NSC’s assessment of the threats on national unity and harmony from communalism in the short, medium, and long term. The MP had also asked whether the NSC has been actively meeting its objective of studying patterns of alienation arising out of communal and religious aspects and polarisation. Sudhakaran said he would submit a notice to the Speaker to allow a discussion on the subject.

This is the second time that the MP’s questions have been disallowed. Earlier, in February, Sudhakaran had asked the Minister for Minority Affairs on the number of religious and caste-based atrocities in India was disallowed from being answered during the earlier Parliament session on February 10, 2022.

The Kerala MP wanted the ministry to provide the number of religion-based atrocities across India, number of deaths due to religion-based atrocities and number of hate-crimes against minorities across the country. He had also asked whether the government was aware that cases of communal rioting had increased by 96% and caste riots by nearly 50% in 2020, and also if the union government was aware that that crimes against scheduled castes had increased by 9.4% and against scheduled tribes 9.3% in 2020.

He had asked the question based on the data from the National Crime Records Bureau, it has been reported that the cases of communal rioting increased by 96% and caste riots increased by nearly 50% in 2020. The NCRB report also highlighted that the crimes against Scheduled Castes have increased by 9.4% and Scheduled Tribes have increased by 9.3% in 2020.

After the question was rejected in February, Sudhakaran wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking the reasons behind disallowing his question, but has not got any response so far.

Over the last few sessions, several questions by MPs, mainly from the Opposition, have often been disallowed. In February 2022, the government had written to the Rajya Sabha Secretariat to disallow TMC MP Shanta Chhetri’s provisionally accepted question (PAQ) in the Upper House on the ‘Position of India in Democracy Index’.

She wanted to know the reason why India had slid to the 53rd position in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index and if the government was aware that it reflected India in poor light, and whether the government had taken steps to improve India’s ranking.