'In the Chair, but have a query': A rare moment when presiding officer participated in LS Question Hour

It was a rare occasion in parliamentary proceedings when the presiding officer himself raised a query during the Question Hour in Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Telugu Desam Party leader Krishna Prasad Tenneti was in the Chair when a question he had listed on rare earth minerals came up for discussion.

Tenneti took the permission of the House to ask the question from the Chair.


"The next question is in my name. If you wish, you can reply," he told Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Earth Sciences, Jitendra Singh.

"Sir, with the permission of the House, I ask: when we find rare earth on the coastline and the seashore, we have to protect the environment and also exploit the ...(resources). How do we balance both?" the TDP leader asked Singh, who is also Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office and the Departments of Atomic Energy and Space.

In his response, Singh explained that beach sand minerals, a key resource Tenneti was mentioning, came primarily from two sources: beach deposits and rock formations.

"These occur in combinations with various other minerals, and we are already actively extracting them," he said.

"During 2014-15, smuggling became an issue. One such mineral was graphite. Contractors exploited graphite exploration to illegally extract monazite, a vital thorium source. So, we instituted some more permanent measures to check this, and for some time there was an embargo," Singh said in his reply.