The Lok Sabha Takes Up to 20 Oral Questions a Day and Has Discussed 28 No-Confidence Motions Since 1963 as Members Hold the Government to Account

A Lok Sabha member who wants a Minister to answer aloud has to give at least 15 clear days’ notice and then win a ballot, because no more than 20 oral questions are listed on a sitting day. That is the daily end of a scale whose other end is the motion of no-confidence, which 50 members must stand to support and after which the government has to resign if the House adopts it.

Between the two sit a handful of other tools, each with its own rule number, notice period and limit. This guide takes them in order of weight and leaves aside how the Houses are organised.

Why the Constitution asks for an answer every day

Article 75(3) says the Council of Ministers “shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People”, the Lok Sabha. It has been in force since 26 January 1950, the date Article 394 gives for the rest of the Constitution. How the Prime Minister, the council and the Cabinet fit together is in how the Union government works.

On 4 November 1948, introducing the draft, B. R. Ambedkar described what that responsibility means in practice. He set the American system, where the executive is judged periodically by the electorate, against the English one, where members of Parliament also judge it daily, through questions, resolutions, no-confidence motions, adjournment motions and debates on the President’s address. The Rajya Sabha Secretariat reproduces the passage, in which he said the draft “has preferred more responsibility to more stability”. For the Constituent Assembly’s wider work, see Ambedkar and the writing of the Constitution.

The Constitution does not list the daily tools. Article 118 lets each House make rules for its own procedure and the conduct of its business, and every device below comes from those rules or from the practice built on them. Article 105 protects the person using them. Clause (1) guarantees freedom of speech in Parliament, subject to the Constitution and the rules, and clause (2) says no member is liable to court proceedings for anything said or any vote given in Parliament or a committee.

How a question reaches a Minister

The Lok Sabha gives the first hour of every sitting, 11 a.m. to noon under Rule 32, to Question Hour. Its Secretariat divides ministries into five groups, A to E, one group for each weekday, so a ministry answers on a fixed day.

There are three kinds of question. A starred question, marked with an asterisk, gets an oral answer and can draw follow-up questions. An unstarred question gets a written reply. A short notice question covers an urgent matter with less than ten clear days’ notice.

On the Lok Sabha Secretariat’s published figures, at most 20 starred questions are listed on a day and at most 230 unstarred ones in a sitting. Notice goes in at least 15 clear days ahead, on a prescribed form that names the Minister and the date, and the Speaker can relax that period. Each member can give up to ten notices a day, but no more than five are admitted, and only one of those can be starred. Starred and unstarred questions are balloted separately. Rules 41 to 44 of the Lok Sabha’s rules, with the Speaker’s Directions and past rulings, decide whether a question is admitted.

In 2019 PRS Legislative Research, an independent research group, noted that the list is published five days ahead and that five or six starred questions are usually reached in the hour. Whoever tabled the question can ask up to two supplementary questions, and the Speaker may let others add theirs.

What the Minister does next, and what happens when the hour is lost

An unstarred answer is laid on the Table of the House in writing, and PRS points out that it allows no follow-up, which suits a request for data more than a request for a position. On short notice questions, PRS wrote in 2019 that the Speaker admits one only with the Minister’s consent and that none had been admitted in the previous ten years. In the Rajya Sabha, if the Minister cannot answer at short notice, the Chairman can direct that the question be listed first on the day it would normally fall due.

A Minister’s promise made in an answer is tracked afterwards. Under PRS’s description, the Committee on Government Assurances watches such undertakings, which are to be carried out within three months unless the time is extended.

The Rajya Sabha’s own history shows how the hour was built. The House first met on 13 May 1952, and there was no Question Hour until 26 May. On 16 May the Chairman announced that he had adopted the House of Lords practice of three starred questions on two days a week. On 27 May 1952 the House listed three starred and 12 unstarred questions, and the first was asked by S. V. Krishnamoorthy Rao, who became the first Deputy Chairman on 31 May. Questions then ran four days a week until September 1964, and from the session that began on 9 September 1964 the first hour of all five weekly sittings went to them.

When the hour does not happen, the written route stays open. The Rajya Sabha at Work volume says that if the time is spent on oaths or obituary references, the starred questions for the day are treated as unstarred and their answers are printed in the debates. The Chairman can also dispense with the hour, as happened on 26 November 1962, during the war with China, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs met leaders of the Opposition groups and told the House they were unanimous that it be dispensed with. On 18 and 19 December 2001 the Chairman dropped it so the House could discuss the attack on Parliament House of 13 December.

Across the 17th Lok Sabha, which sat from 2019 to 2024, PRS counted the hour at 60 percent of its scheduled time in the Lok Sabha and 52 percent in the Rajya Sabha. It adds that 24 percent of the Lok Sabha’s questions listed for oral reply were answered orally, against 31 percent in the Rajya Sabha. The Monsoon Session of 2020 had no Question Hour because of the pandemic, though members could still ask unstarred questions. The latest session’s figures are in our guide to sessions.

Zero Hour has no rule behind it

The Lok Sabha Secretariat says in plain words that the term Zero Hour “is not formally recognised in our parliamentary procedure.” Members give notice to the Speaker between 8.30 and 9.00 a.m., and the Speaker decides which are allowed. The Secretariat says up to 20 matters a day are ranked by ballot, the first five are taken after Question Hour and the laying of papers, and the rest come after 6 p.m. or at the end of business.

The Rajya Sabha traces the practice to the early 1960s, when members began raising urgent subjects right after Question Hour. In its own record a Chairman said the hour had been “a convention in this House from the days of Dr. Radhakrishnan.” The Rajya Sabha now caps it at 15 matters a day. Its length varies. On 3 August 1993 it ran two hours and 57 minutes with 15 members speaking on the postponement of elections by the Chief Election Commissioner, while on 4 May 1994 three matters took nine minutes.

Rule 377 is the written cousin. The Lok Sabha Secretariat says it has existed since 1954 for matters that are not points of order and have no other route. According to PRS the notice cannot exceed 250 words and that a member can raise only one such matter in a week.

A calling attention under Rule 197 is sharper. A member, with the Speaker’s permission, draws a Minister’s attention to an urgent matter, and the Minister makes a brief statement. Clarifying questions follow, there is no vote, and PRS says no more than two are taken in a day. In the Rajya Sabha, under Rule 180, only one is raised at a sitting and the Chairman alone admits it, with no duty to give reasons.

Discussions that end without a vote, and the ones that end with one

A half-hour discussion under Rule 55 exists only to follow up an answer to a question that needs further explanation. A member gives three days’ notice, PRS says, the Speaker decides whether to allow it, and up to four other members can ask questions. The Rajya Sabha holds its version, under Rule 60, from 5 to 5.30 p.m., with no motion and no vote.

A short duration discussion, Rule 193 in the Lok Sabha and Rule 176 in the Rajya Sabha, takes up an urgent public matter without a vote. In the Rajya Sabha, according to its Secretariat, two other members must sign the notice, the time is limited to two and a half hours, and the member who starts it has no right of reply. PRS counted 13 such discussions in the Lok Sabha of 2019 to 2024, on subjects including climate change, price rise, sports and the situation in Ukraine, and one half-hour discussion. In the Budget Session of 2026 the Lok Sabha spent six hours on one about left-wing extremism.

A motion under Rule 184 is the same procedure with a vote at the end. Two come from the 15th Lok Sabha in PRS’s list: one on inflation that was adopted and one disapproving foreign direct investment in retail that was not. Cut motions in the Budget debate are another tool. PRS describes a token cut of Rs 100 to register a grievance, an economy cut and a policy cut to Re 1, and says the government is expected to resign if one passes.

An adjournment motion asks the House to set its business aside for a definite matter of urgent public importance. The Lok Sabha Secretariat says its adoption “is regarded as a sort of censure of the Government”. PRS found seven of them discussed in the 14th Lok Sabha, two in the 15th, and none in the 16th or the 17th. The Rajya Sabha has no adjournment, censure or no-confidence motion at all, according to its Secretariat.

The no-confidence motion, Rule 198

The motion reads that the House “expresses its want of confidence in the Council of Ministers,” and it needs no stated grounds. Rule 198 governs it, and PRS says any member with the support of 50 colleagues can move it: the Speaker asks those in favour to rise and fixes a time for the debate if at least 50 do. The 1952 rules set the threshold at 30. If a majority supports it, or rejects a confidence motion, the government resigns. Because Article 75(3) ties the council to the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha cannot remove a government, as our guide to that House explains. A member who defies a party whip in the vote faces the penalty described in the anti-defection law.

None was moved in the first two Lok Sabhas, from 1952 to 1962. Acharya J. B. Kripalani moved the first in 1963 against Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. PRS records 21 hours of debate over four days with 40 members taking part, and Nehru called the debate “a little unreal”. In 1979 Y. B. Chavan moved a motion against Prime Minister Morarji Desai. After nine hours over two days Desai resigned before the vote, the first such motion to bring a government down.

The motion of the Monsoon Session of 2018 was the 27th since 1952 and was defeated. On 8 August 2023 the Lok Sabha began debating one moved on 26 July, and PRS counted it as the 28th, alongside 11 confidence motions. The rules say a motion should be discussed within ten days of introduction, and that one began on the 13th day. The debate ran 20 hours, PRS reports, with 52 members, other than Ministers, taking part. All India Radio reported that the Lok Sabha defeated it on the evening of 10 August 2023 after the Prime Minister replied. PRS’s reports for the sessions from Winter 2025 to Monsoon 2026 record no later motion against the Council of Ministers.

How much of it is used

PRS found that members of the 17th Lok Sabha asked on average 203 questions each if male and 199 if female, and that the devices in the middle of this scale were used sparingly, with one half-hour discussion and no adjournment motion in five years. In the Winter Session of 2025, which ran from 1 to 19 December, Question Hour used 67 percent of its scheduled time in the Lok Sabha and 80 percent in the Rajya Sabha, and 23 percent of starred questions were answered orally in the Lok Sabha and 26 percent in the Rajya Sabha.