MHA stops sharing data on Communal Incidents which it did till 2017
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 21, 2020
Debate on communal riots is a constant in public discourse these days. While NCRB provides data on riots with a  ‘communal/religious’ reasons, the Home Ministry which provided data on communal incidents till 2017 has now stopped providing such data.
Over the past few years, communal incidents and riots have been constant in public discourse. Data provided by law enforcement authorities does indicate a substantial number of communal incidents every year across the country.
In an earlier story on Factly, the trends relating to communal riots were analysed until the year 2017. In this story, we look at the incidence of communal riots as per NCRB’s (National Crime Record Bureau) Crime in India (CII) – 2018 report.
Incidence
of communal riots have reduced in 2018 as per NCRB report
Starting in 2014, the NCRB has modified its formats and included details on riots due to ‘communal/religious’ reasons to be reported separately.
As per the NCRB’s 2018 CII report, 512 cases of riots that are ‘communal/religious’ in nature have been recorded with the police. This is lower than that of 2017 when 723 such incidents were reported. The 2017 figure is was lower than in the previous years.
Overthe five-year period (2014-18) i.e. from the data relating tocommunal/religious riots is being separately recorded, the number of cases hasdropped by more than half. In the year 2014, the incidence of such cases was1,227 which also happens to be the highest in these five years. However, italso needs to be noted that these are incidents reported by the state policeand may not fully represent the actual number of incidents on the ground.
Bihar
continues to report the highest number of ‘Communal Riot cases’
In2017, Bihar recorded the highest number of communal/religious riots with 163cases. In the
year 2018, this number increased marginally to 167 and is stillthe highest among the States & UTs.
Haryana, which reported a substantial reduction in such incidents in 2017(25) compared to 2016 (250), saw an increase in such cases in 2018 (45 incidents). The number of incidents recorded also increased in the case of Maharashtra from 71 in 2017 to 94 in 2018, which also happens to be the second-highest in the country. It replaces Karnataka at second position, where the number of cases reduced to 29 in 2018.
Telanganawhich reported an increase in the number of cases in 2017  (39 cases) compared to the zero cases theearlier year, reported only 4 instances of communal riots in 2018. Number ofcases in Odisha also witnessed a sharp fall with 9 cases in 2018, compared tothat of 91 cases in 2017. Surprisingly, Uttar Pradesh hasn’t reported a singleincident related to communal/religious riots for the year 2018.
Fewer number of cases recorded in Cities for the year 2018
Since2016, the NCRB  Report provides datarelating to various crimes across 19 cities in India whose population is morethan 2 million (i.e. 20 lakhs). Prior to that, the data for a larger group of53 cities was provided in the NCRB report.
Forthe year
2018, 20 incidents of communal/religious riots wererecorded across the 19 cities. Whereas in the year 2017, 37 such incidents wererecorded.  During this period (2014 to2018), the highest number of such incidents was reported in 2014, when 40 suchincidents were reported from these 19 cities.
A major portion of the cases recorded in 2018 was in Kanpur with 11 cases. Even in 2017, Kanpur recorded a higher number of cases (11 cases) along with Pune which also reported 11 cases.
Specific
reason for a large number of riots is not known
In
2018, there were more than 57 thousand cases of riots acrossthe country as reported by NCRB, of which the 512 cases of Communal/Religiousriots constitute less than 1% of the total.
Same was the situation in earlier years, wherein the incidents of Communal/Religious riots formed a minute part of the total cases booked under riots. The other reasons for rioting include – Sectarian, Industrial, Political, Caste Conflict, Family disputes, Rivalry, Water disputes, Land etc. Of these, a major chunk of the cases is recorded under Land Disputes.
In 2018, more than 12 thousand cases of riots are booked under the head ‘Land Disputes’. With the rest of the heads accounting between 1-2% each at best. However, the highest portion of the riot cases is categorized as ‘Other Rioting’ where specific reasons are not known. In 2018 alone, around 24 thousand cases i.e. 42% of the riot cases are reported in this category.
Priorto 2017, more than 90% of the total riot cases were reported in NCRB data as ‘OtherRioting’. The share of this category has now reduced after new categoriesincluding ‘land disputes’ were introduced in 2017.
Since a major portion of these incidents is categorized under  ‘Other rioting’, specific details about these incidents are not known and it is possible that communal riot incidents may also be included in this category by the state police. Furthermore, there are riots recorded under – ‘sectarian’, ‘Caste conflicts’, ‘Vigilant’ etc. which could also be related to communal/religious riots.
Is
the data reliable?
Uttar Pradesh reported ‘zero’ such incidents in 2018. However, the violence that broke out in Kasganj in January 2018 was a result of communal clashes. The UP Police lodged 5 FIRs under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). FIRs included Section 295 of the IPC which is about ‘injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion’.
#Kasganj update~ As per report from distt Admin.
1~Total 5 FIR's have been lodged.
2~In the act of violence Abhishek @ chandan gupta (20yrs) has lost his life.
3~Total 112 people arrested ( 31 named & 81 preventive )
4~Sec144 crpc imposed
5~Situation normal
6~Strict action pic.twitter.com/UFTj5aoUPP
However, as
per the UP DGP, this was not an incident of communal violence, but agroup clash and may have been reported as an offence related to religion. UPreported 192
offences relating to religion in 2018.
Suchtechnical categorization of cases without the underlying context defeats the entirepurpose of understanding specific types of offences.
Data
relating to communal/religious riots not available with MHA for 2018
An earlier story of Factly analysed the variance between the data provided in the NCRB report and the data with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), provided in response to the Lok Sabha questions. The data did not match even for a single year.
Inconsistencyin the methodology of collating the data i.e. NCRB numbers being based on theFIRs filed, categorization of the crime, principle offence rule etc. are someof the reasons offered by the government for the difference in the numbers.
TheMHA has in response to various questions in parliament has provided informationregarding the communal/religious riots till the year 2017. On 11
December 2018, the MHA provided data for 2014 to 2017.
Strangely enough, responding to a question in Lok Sabha on 19 November 2019, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, stated that the responsibility of maintaining the data rests with respective State governments and did not provide any numbers. It is intriguing to note that the MHA which provided this data till 2017 is now saying that the responsibility lies with the state governments.
Although, the respective state governments have the primary responsibility of collecting and maintaining the data since law & order is a state subject, the MHA been collating the information and furnishing the same until 2017 as is evident from the information provided in Lok Sabha. However, for reasons not known, the MHA is not disclosing this data for 2018.
Factlyhas written to Ministry of Home Affairs seeking clarification on this changeand this article will be updated as and when a response is received.