What the house asked about.
Every question tabled in the Lok Sabha names the ministry that had to answer it. Counted up, that shows which parts of government the house chose to examine. A question is a demand for information rather than an accusation, so a department near the top is one being watched closely.
Ranked by questions put to them.
Scale matters more than scandal here. Railways and Health sit near the top partly because they touch every constituency in the country, so read this as a map of where attention went and not as a league table of failure.
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Health and Family Welfare 25,715
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Finance 23,166
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Railways 20,793
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Home Affairs 18,037
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Human Resource Development 17,196
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Road Transport and Highways 11,889
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Civil Aviation 11,822
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Commerce and Industry 11,532
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Rural Development 10,774
The twelve most questioned departments. Counts published by PRS Legislative Research, from the questions tabled in the 15th to 18th Lok Sabha. Every department is listed below, and selecting one shows who asked.
Agriculture
The members who put the most questions to this department. 9,671 questions from 690 members.
| # | Member | Party | Questions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anandrao Adsul Maharashtra |
|
95 |
| 2 | Dharmendra Yadav Uttar Pradesh | SP | 91 |
| 3 | Shivaji Adhalrao Patil Maharashtra |
|
88 |
| 4 | Gajanan Dharmshi Babar Maharashtra |
|
77 |
| 5 | Anto Antony Kerala |
|
76 |
| 6 | Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy Andhra Pradesh |
|
75 |
| 7 | Hansraj Gangaram Ahir Maharashtra |
|
68 |
| 8 | Feroze Varun Gandhi Uttar Pradesh |
|
65 |
| 9 | Shruti Choudhry Haryana |
|
65 |
| 10 | Suresh Kodikunnil Kerala |
|
63 |
| 11 | Dhruva Narayana Rangaswamy Karnataka |
|
62 |
| 12 | Mahendrasinh Pruthvisinh Chauhan Gujarat |
|
59 |
| 13 | Prabhakar Ponnam Andhra Pradesh |
|
58 |
| 14 | Rajiv Ranjan (Lalan) Singh Bihar |
|
57 |
| 15 | Ganesh Singh Madhya Pradesh |
|
56 |
| 16 | Nishikant Dubey Jharkhand |
|
55 |
| 17 | Nalin Kumar Kateel Karnataka |
|
54 |
| 18 | Pradeep Kumar Majhi Odisha |
|
53 |
| 19 | Kamla Devi Patle Chhattisgarh |
|
51 |
| 20 | Anant Kumar Hegde Karnataka |
|
50 |
| 21 | Devji Patel Rajasthan |
|
50 |
| 22 | Harish Choudhary Rajasthan |
|
50 |
| 23 | Pralhad Venkatesh Joshi Karnataka |
|
50 |
| 24 | Suresh Kumar Shetkar Andhra Pradesh |
|
50 |
| 25 | A.T. Nana Patil Maharashtra |
|
49 |
Questions counted by department
- What it measures
- Questions tabled in the Lok Sabha, counted once each against the ministry that was required to answer.
- What moves it
- The size of a department's remit, how many constituencies it touches, and whether it was in the news. A member with a local grievance about a railway line asks the railways.
- What it cannot show
- Whether the question was answered, whether the answer was any good, or whether the member pursued it afterwards. It also cannot show quality: one carefully researched question counts the same as one asked to fill a slot.