Govt may soon ask bureaucrats to disclose assets in public

ON ITS guidance for 2011, BoI (babusofindia.com) wrote on December 31 that sooner or later, Indian bureaucrats may have to place the movable and immovable assets in public domain in the same way as Indian politicians currently do. The government has reportedly decided to go ahead with a proposal to make it mandatory for Indian civil servants to put details of their assets in government website, according to media reports. The decision is likely to be conveyed by cabinet secretary to secretaries in a meeting convened in New Delhi on March 8, 2011.

Such a decision has been in the pipeline for almost two years now, but many high-ranking bureaucrats opposed to such a move earlier. Their main contention is that if they put their asset details in public domains, their privacy would be intruded upon.

But with the government facing a series of scams and NDA-run Bihar forcing bureaucrats declare assets compulsorily, the Central government does not want to delay the move any further, according to sources.

Already, asset details of about 1000 bureaucrats, mostly IAS and IPS, are kept web-ready, according to a report.

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