Offshore mining question disappears from Lok Sabha, alleges KC Venugopal

A starred question on the auction of offshore mining blocks, listed in the name of two ruling party MPs, mysteriously vanished from the Lok Sabha, alleged Congress MP KC Venugopal on Wednesday.

Taking to social media platform X, Venugopal condemned the unexplained removal, calling it a serious blow to democratic procedure.

“Today, the very first starred question in Lok Sabha on the Auction of Offshore Mining Blocks, listed in the name of two ruling party MPs, miraculously vanished,” Venugopal wrote.

“We have persistently raised this issue — the environmental dangers, the absence of socio-economic impact assessments, and the opaque auction process. I had raised it in the last session through a Calling Attention Motion, and several MPs have raised it on multiple occasions. We have also been submitting questions in this session,” he said.

“Today, we were expecting the Government to offer some clarity and accountability. But shockingly, after uploading the question list in the public domain, the question was mysteriously withdrawn at the last minute without any explanation,” he further wrote.

Venugopal went on to ask pointedly: “Why was this question pulled out? What forced this abrupt deletion? Who is the government trying to protect? Was it because the government’s dubious offshore mining policy was about to be exposed in broad daylight?”

Calling the incident an instance of "procedural manipulation", he warned that such acts raised “serious questions about transparency and the state of our democracy.”