What are Question Hour and Zero Hour

Question Hour is the liveliest hour in Parliament.
It is during this one hour that Members of Parliament ask questions of ministers and hold them accountable for the functioning of their ministries.
The questions that MPs ask are designed to elicit information and trigger suitable action by ministries.

Zero Hour is an Indian parliamentary innovation.
The phrase does not find mention in the rules of procedure.
The concept of Zero Hour started organically in the first decade of the Indian Parliament when MPs felt the need for raising important constituency and national issues.
During the initial days, Parliament used to break for lunch at 1 pm. Therefore, the opportunity for MPs to raise national issues without an advance notice became available at 12 pm and could last for an hour until the House adjourned for lunch.
This led to the hour being popularly referred to as Zero Hour and the issues being raised during this time as Zero Hour submissions.
Over the years, presiding officers of both Houses have given directions to streamline the working of Zero Hour to make it even more effective.
Its importance can be gauged from the support it receives from citizens, media, MPs and presiding officers despite not being part of the rulebook.

Parliament has comprehensive rules for dealing with every aspect of Question Hour. And the presiding officers of the two houses are the final authority with respect to the conduct of Question Hour.
For example, usually, Question Hour is the first hour of a parliamentary sitting.
In 2014, Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari shifted Question Hour in the House from 11 am to 12 noon.
The move was to prevent the disruption of Question Hour.

Parliamentary rules provide guidelines on the kind of questions that can be asked by MPs.
Questions have to be limited to 150 words.
They have to be precise and not too general.
The question should also be related to an area of responsibility of the Government of India.
Questions should not seek information about matters that are secret or are under adjudication before courts.
It is the presiding officers of the two Houses who finally decide whether a question raised by an MP will be admitted for answering by the government.

Question Hour in both Houses is held on all days of the session.
But there are two days when an exception is made. There is no Question Hour on the day the President addresses MPs from both Houses in the Central Hall.
The President’s speech takes place at the beginning of a new Lok Sabha and on the first day of a new Parliament year.
Question Hour is not scheduled either on the day the Finance Minister presents the Budget.

To streamline the answering of questions raised by MPs, the ministries are put into five groups.
Each group answers questions on the day allocated to it.
For example, in the last session, on Thursday the Ministries of Civil Aviation, Labour, Housing, and Youth Affairs and Sports were answering questions posed by Lok Sabha MPs.
This grouping of ministries is different for the two Houses so that ministers can be present in one house to answer questions,
MPs can specify whether they want an oral or written response to their questions.
They can put an asterisk against their question signifying that they want the minister to answer that question on the floor.
These are referred to as starred questions. After the minister’s response, the MP who asked the question and other MPs can also ask a follow-up question.
This is the visible part of Question Hour, where you see MPs trying to corner ministers on the functioning of their ministries on live television.
Seasoned parliamentarians choose to ask an oral question when the answer to the question will put the government in an uncomfortable position.

Ministries receive the questions 15 days in advance so that they can prepare their ministers for Question Hour.
They also have to prepare for sharp follow-up questions they can expect to be asked in the House.
Governments officers are close at hand in a gallery so that they can pass notes or relevant documents to support the minister in answering a question.

MPs usually ask questions to hold ministers accountable. But the rules also provide them with a mechanism for asking their colleagues a question.
Such a question should be limited to the role of an MP relating to a Bill or a resolution being piloted by them or any other matter connected with the functioning of
the House for which they are responsible. Should the presiding officer so allow, MPs can also ask a question to a minister at a notice period shorter than 15 days.

The total number of questions asked by MPs in the starred and unstarred categories are then put in a random ballot.
From the ballot in Lok Sabha, 20 starred questions are picked for answering during Question Hour and 230 are picked for written answers.