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Sachin Tendulkar asks first question in Parliament in three years

Sachin Tendulkar has been a member of Parliament since 2012

More than three years after he was nominated as a Rajya Sabha member, Sachin Tendulkar asked his first Parliament question, at the Upper Legislative House on Friday, according to Economic Times. Tendulkar is a member of the Parliament Committee on Information Technology from September 1, 2015. 

His first direct involvement in parliamentary matters, a markedly late debut, came through a written question to the Ministry of Railways, to which he also received a written answer from the Minister of State for Railways, Manoj Sinha. He has also posed a question on the issue of changes in provisions for issuing of driving licenses, to which the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is scheduled to reply on Monday.

"Will the Minister of Railways be pleased to state the rationale behind creating a new zone for Kolkata Metro and whether it can be replicated in other cities such as Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi that also have similar suburban rail services; the criteria that a suburban railway system must fulfil to enable it to be notified as a separate zone; and whether the above three cities fulfil that criteria and are eligible for being notified as separate zones?"  – went Tendulkar’s query.

The Railways Ministry replied that the Kolkata metro service is a one-of-a-kind stand-alone system on Indian Railways (IR), which operates only Metro services.

"After taking this into consideration along with operational, administrative and other factors, the zonal railway status was granted to Metro Railway, Kolkata to, inter-alia, help this organization in its operations and in further expansion. In the Indian Railway system operational in other cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, the suburban railway traffic is run along with the mainline traffic”, the reply said.

Sachin is a nominated member of Parliament, appointed to the post by the President, and has no direct links with any political party. There has been some criticism of Sachin’s limited involvement in parliamentary affairs. A shocking infographic that was brought out earlier this year:

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