CHENNAI: DMK veteran M Karunanidhi , his son M K Stalin and DMDK chief Vijayakanth , all chief ministerial aspirants, have not posed a single question during question hour of the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly in the last five years. If raising queries in the legislature is an indication of the performance of a MLA, AISMK leader R Sarathkumar is the most active.The RTI reply said the actor turned-politician has posed the maximum number of questions, 8,639 out of 66,497 raised by MLAs in the 14th assembly. Sarathkumar recently quit the AIADMK-led alliance and tied up with the BJP.In a reply to an RTI query filed by OnlineRTI.com, the assembly secretariat said the three leaders had not asked a single question between May 2011, when the AIADMK government assumed charge, and February 2016 when the last session of the current assembly ended.It is significant that Karunanidhi has not attended a single session under the AIADMK regime and visits the assembly hall once in three months to mark his attendance in the registry. Vijayakanth too stopped attending assembly sessions after a bitter spat with chief minister J Jayalalithaa in February 2012. As for Stalin, his associates say it could well be that none of his questions were admitted.Any elected member shall ask a question to elicit information of a definite matter of public importance within the cognizance of the minister to whom it is addressed. It is the prerogative of the Speaker to decide on the admissibility of questions during the question hour session.“It's not right to say that Karunanidhi and Stalin did not ask any questions. The government has not made any arrangement for the wheelchair-bound Kalaignar to enter and be seated in the hall despite several requests,“ said former Chennai Mayor and DMK leader M Subramanian.He said Stalin had raised several queries during zero hour but the assembly speaker had not granted permission to debate the issues.“Stalin had also given questions in advance, but the secretariat did not admit them as they don't want any healthy debates,“ said Subramanian.The RTI reply said only 188 of 234 elected representatives raised questions in the current assembly. Of them, 15 members asked more than 1,000 questions each, 23 asked less than 10 questions and 29 MLAs raised less than 20 questions. Speaker, chief minister and ministers are exempted from the list as are not required to ask questions in the assembly.Former assembly speaker and DMK leader R Avudaiyappan said, “MLAs may be giving questions to the legislative assembly secretariat, but it is the speaker's discretion to allow such questions in the house.”Sarathkumar is followed by Arni MLA R M Babu Murugavel (6,541 queries), Manamadurai MLA M Gunaseka ran (5,192), Viralimalai MLA Dr C Vijayabaskar (5,155) and Karaikudi MLA Cholan C T Palanichamy (3,107) in having the maximum queries.Jayaram Venkatesan from Arappor Iyakkam, an NGO, which works on governance issues, said: “Elected representatives should voice people's concerns in the legislature or address problems in the constituency but there is no such serious discussion in the state assembly .“MLAs are more interested in political mudslinging and spending more time praising their leaders rather than discussing issues of their constituency , he said.Among DMK members, Mannargudi MLA T R B Rajaa raised the maximum of 433 questions. In Congress, Colachel MLA J G Prince has asked 3,080 questions. Among the left parties, CPI's K Ulaganathan asked 1,070 questions, while CPM's A Soundararajan raised 490 queries.