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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Centre to ask bureaucrats to reveal property details by Iftikhar Gilani

Centre to ask bureaucrats to reveal property details by Iftikhar Gilani

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published Published on Mar 12, 2011   modified Modified on Mar 12, 2011

Meeting of Secretaries convened for 8 March; data on 1,000 officers already in

Union Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar is calling a meeting of union secretaries here on 8 March to convey to them a government decision making it mandatory for bureaucrats to put details of the moveable and immoveable property they own on a government website.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been pushing for this as part of a promised clean-up drive against corruption in the government. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), for instance, puts up even the pay scales of officers in the PMO on its website.

The PMO is extending the project to make things transparent and accountable in the bureaucracy as a whole. A crucial component of the drive is to make officers update property details every year.

Sources privy to the decision said property details of officers of IAS and IPS cadres would be put online in the beginning, which is to be followed up with details of all the officer-grade services in a year or so.

They said the data of some 1,000 bureaucrats has been made web-ready, and would be made accessible to the public after the meeting of secretaries, convened by the Cabinet Secretary, clears the project.

Sources said the Cabinet Secretary has already held three meetings to discuss the issue with the secretaries and they conceded that bureaucrats should not conduct themselves like ‘touch-me-nots’, especially when a similar system is in vogue for people contesting elections.

A view emerged in the meetings that bureaucrats are public servants and their masters are the people who have the right to keep a tab on their financial status to ensure they do not indulge in corrupt practices.

The Election Commission, for instance, has been putting on its website the details of assets filed on affidavit by candidates for parliamentary and assembly elections. This makes for a ready reference of candidates’ wealth and helps keep a tab.

Some senior bureaucrats have, however, protested that their privacy would be intruded upon if they put details of their assets on the internet.

They say all officers are already required to give these details to the government every year and the government can scrutinise them to nab the corrupt, instead of exposing all officers and subjecting them to unnecessary harassment by anyone who seeks to question their integrity.

A decade ago, the then Central Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal had put for the first time the details of the bureaucrats against whom action was initiated for alleged corrupt practices on the CVC’s website.

He, however, had to pull out the names after strong protest by the bureaucrats.

Tehelka Magazine, 7 March, 2011, http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Ws070311Centre.asp


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