(This story originally appeared in on Dec 02, 2015)

NEW DELHI: Non-BJP ruled states accounted for 52 per cent of the incidents of communal violence recorded in the country this year until October, according to home ministry data presented in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. Among the 9 states where the BJP is in power, there was a discernible decline in the number communal clashes in Rajasthan and Gujarat in the first 10 months of this year as compared to 2014, even as incidents in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand recorded an increase.Significantly, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest communal violence at 139 incidents till October 2015, surpassing the 133 incidents seen in whole of last year. Maharashtra followed UP with 97 communal incidents till October (same as 97 incidents in 2014), while ranking next were Madhya Pradesh at 86 incidents (56 in 2014), Karnataka with 79 incidents (73 in 2014), Bihar with 59 incidents (61 in 2014), Rajasthan with 54 incidents (72 last year) and Gujarat with 47 incidents till October as compared to 74 in 2014.A rise was seen in incidents of communal violence in Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal, with data cited in reply to a Lok Sabha question putting the number at 24 in the first 10 months of this year, up from 16 through 2014.Congress-ruled Karnataka too witnessed more communal incidents at 79 till October this year, as compared to 73 incidents witnessed in 2014.Telangana, where the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) is in power, witnessed 10 incidents in the first 10 months of this year as compared to 5 in all of last year.The ongoing 'intolerance debate' may have dominated political discourse in Bihar during the recent assembly polls, but the JD(U)-ruled state witnessed no more than 59 incidents till October 2012, as against 61 incidents in 2014.Other non-BJP ruled states that could keep communal violence in check were Tamil Nadu , where incidents fell to 3 till October this year from 15 in 2014; Odisha that recorded no incident against 3 last year; and Kerala where there has been a single incident so far against 4 in 2014.Interestingly, though Haryana accounted for one of the country's two 'important' communal events (where at least 1 person is killed or at least 10 persons injured) this year - a feud in May over construction of a place of worship at Atali village in Faridabad - the total number of incidents in the state was 3 till October. The lynching of Mohd Akhlaq in Bisahda village of UP's Gautam Budh Nagar district was the other important incident of 2015.While there were two major communal incidents (where over 5 persons are killed or 10 injured) in 2013 (at Dhule in Maharashtra and Muzaffarnagar in UP), there was just one such incident at Qutubsher in Saharanpur, UP last year.Responding to supplementaries on Tuesday, minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju said communal incidents had declined substantially between 2013 and October this year. As the Opposition benches protested his claim, Rijiju said that while there had been some rise in incidents between 2014 and 2015, when compared to 2013, incidents had come down.As reported by TOI on November 24, there were 650 communal incidents till October this year, as compared to 644 in all of 2014. This is lower than the 823 and 668 incidents recorded in 2013 and 2012 respectively, when the UPA was in power.Even a comparison of incidents recorded between January and October shows that incidents were lower at 630 this year and 561 in 2014 (since NDA came to power) as compared to 694 in 2013.