CHENNAI: Nearly five months after Parliament was informed that data validation was in the “final stages” for the publication of the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) annual reports for the year 2023, the Union Home Ministry has repeated the same reason, almost verbatim, in response to a question on the delay in publication raised in the Lok Sabha.
The reply to a question on the reasons for the non-publication of any reports after 2022, tabled in the Rajya Sabha on March 19, 2025, said, “data validation for the 2023 report is in the final stage.”
The reply tabled 140 days later, on August 5, 2025 (Tuesday), in response to a question raised in the Lok Sabha, also stated, “data validation for the 2023 reports is in the final stage.”
The rest of both replies, presented by Minister of State Bandi Sanjay Kumar, also read the same, elaborating on the process involved in data collection and verification.
The NCRB releases three important annual publications, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, Crime in India, and Prison Statistics India with data compiled for the calendar year from across the states, based on information provided by the respective State Crime Records Bureaux.
While the reports are usually released in the latter half of the subsequent year, the publication of the reports for 2023 has been inordinately delayed. The three reports for 2022 were released in December 2023.
Though the question raised by Imran Masood, the Member of Parliament (MP) from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, asked for the timeline by which the reports are likely to be published, the Ministry, in its reply on Tuesday, did not provide any timeline, apart from repeating that validation is in the final stages.
Masood also asked whether the government proposes to use digital technology or advanced analytics to expedite and streamline the process of data collection and publication.
The reply stated, “The data is collected digitally through a dedicated software application developed by the Bureau.”
This, again, was part of the reply submitted in March to a question raised by Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose. “The publications collate data for a calendar year; hence, the process of data collection is initiated only after the completion of the respective year. The data for the reports is collected from 89 data-supplying centres, which include 36 states/Union Territories and 53 metropolitan cities, i.e., cities with a population of more than 10 lakhs,” both replies said.
The Ministry’s responses to several starred and unstarred questions on crime statistics in different states, raised by MPs in the current session, have provided data only up to 2022, citing the published NCRB reports.