year, there is discrepancy between the data on communal incidents reported by
the Home Ministry & the NCRB. In this story, we look the numbers, the
discrepancies and the way forward. After adelay of 1.5 years, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has recentlypublished Crime in India-2017 report. Thereport furnishes the statistics of the various crimes committed in India during2017. This annual report from NCRB acts as the main reference as far as thecrime statistics in India are concerned. Over thepast few years, the debate over communal incidents in the country hasn’tstopped. While political parties and groups trade charges over one another, welook at the state of data related to communal incidents in the country and ifthe past discrepancies have been corrected in 2017. Multiple times in the past, Factly has written about such discrepancies and how the data from NCRB didnot match with the data from the Home Ministry. NCRB reports 723 riots of Communal nature in 2017 As perNCRB’s Crime in India -2017 report, the number of riots of communal/religious nature was723 for the year 2017. Since 2014, the riots of communal/religious nature arebeing reported separately. Prior to that, NCRB’s crime in India categorized anyriots under one larger head ‘Riots’, which also included Industrial, Political,sectarian, caste related etc. among others. Over this4-year period, since the NCRB report has been categorizing thecommunal/religious riots separately, 2017 reported the least number of suchincidents. As per NCRB’s data, thehighest number of such riots were reported in the year 2014 (1227 incidents). Bihar reported the highest such riots followed by Karnataka and Odisha. Of the 723incidents such riots of communal nature in the country as per NCRB report, 163are from Bihar. Karnataka and Odisha rank next with 92 and 91 incidentsrespectively. Maharashtra with 71 incidents and Jharkhand with 66 incidentscomplete the top 5 states with the highest incidents of communal/religiousriots in 2017. Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand along all theNorth-Eastern states and all the Union Territories have reported zeroCommunal/Religious riots in 2017. In 2016, Haryana with 250 such incidents reported the highestnumber of communal/religious riots followed by Jharkhand (176), Bihar (139),Maharashtra (57) and Karnataka (42). While the overall such incidents fell downfrom 869 in 2016 to 723 in 2017, the number of states which reported anincrease in the number of such riots compared to 2016, has gone up. The overalldip in the national figure was due to the fall in the numbers for Haryana andJharkhand in 2017. Number of instances higher in 2017 according to the information provided by the Home Ministry As per thedata provided in response to a question in Lok Sabha on 06 February 2018, by the Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) , the number of Communal incidents recorded for 2017 was 822. TheInformation provided by Home Ministry in Lok Sabha, also differs from the NCRBnumbers in the earlier years. If onecompares the data for the four years (2014, 2015,2016,2017) where in NCRBreport has specifically categorized ‘Communal/Religious’ riots, reveals thatthere is a difference between the NCRB data and the information provided by theHome Ministry every year. The number of incidentsreported by Home Ministry in Lok Sabha for 2014, 2015, 2016 are 644, 751 and703 respectively. In fact, this is the first time in these 4 years when the MHAreported higher numbers compared to the NCRB. Large State wise variance between NCRB and Home Ministry Data A largervariance exists when the state wise data provided by NCRB and Home Ministry iscompared. It wasnoted earlier that as per NCRB data, Bihar reported the highest number ofincidents for 2017 with 163. However as per the data provided by MHA in Lok Sabha, Uttar Pradesh leads the listwith 195 incidents. As per NCRB data, Uttar Pradesh had only 34 instances ofcommunal riots. Rajasthanalso have large variance between NCRB data and MHA’s data. In the former, thereported incidents for 2017 were only 16, while in later it is 91. Odisha isanother state with a large difference between the two sources of Informationwith NCRB data reporting 91 instances and the MHA’s data reporting only 4instances. In the case of West Bengal also,only 6 incidents were reported by NCRB, while as per MHA’s data provided in LokSabha, the number of communal incidents were 58. 2008 had the highest number of communal incidents in 10 years as per MHA If onecompares the data provided by the MHA for the last 10 years, the year 2008 hadthe highest number of communal incidents with 943 as per information provided in the Lok Sabha. The nexthighest as per MHA was 823 incidents in 2013 followed by 2017 with 822incidents.