Question Hour and Zero Hour
▪ Mr. Birla proposed that municipal bodies incorporate procedures such as Question Hour and Zero Hour to allow elected representatives to raise issues concerning their constituencies.
Question Hour
▪ It is a one-hour time period provided to MPs to ask questions to the minister and hold them
accountable for the functioning of their ministries.
▪ The questions can also be asked to the private members (MPs who are not ministers)
Zero Hour
▪ Zero hour commences directly after the question hour and extends until the commencement of the day’s agenda, signifying the interval between the two.
▪ Under this, Members of Parliament (MPs) can raise matters without any prior notice.
▪ Zero Hour is an Indian parliamentary innovation. The phrase is not mentioned in the rules of procedure.
Census 2027
▪ The first phase House Listing Operations and Housing Schedule (HLO) expected to begin on April 1, 2026.
▪ For Census 2021, which will now be known as Census 2027, as many as 31 questions were notified for the first phase.
▪ This will be the first digital Census and also the first to enumerate caste in Independent India.
▪ Caste will be counted in the second and the main phase: the Population Census which will be
conducted in February 2027.
