| Babus give false details of property, govt accepts blindly | | Rich officers of poor JK | | Minam Saqib
Early Times Report
srinagar, May 31: There is no attempt by the J&K government to find whether the property details submitted by bureaucrats are authentic.
As per sub-section (2) of section 9 of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Men and Public Servants Declaration of Assets and other Provisions Act, 1983, every public servant shall submit to the prescribed authority annual returns of the assets held by him/her and his/her family members in the month of January every year.
They are also required to indicate the reasons for increase, if any, in the assets and source as per Act. The Act and rules provide for imposing a penalty for non-submission of the property returns.
However, most of the Jammu Kashmir Administrative Service officers are either not willing to submit the property return details or not sharing the exact property details.
"We receive the property return details from the bureaucrats. But there is no check to know how far the property return details are based on facts. Most of the officers are hiding the details for various reasons," an official of General Administration Department said.
He said that the department had no role to check the authenticity of property details. "Whatever details are being provided, we put that on the website," the official said.
There are few bureaucrats who have mentioned the value of their assets over Rs 70 lakh while others said they don't own any immovable property.
"Property value not assessed," several officers have mentioned in the affidavits of property returns.
A KAS officer having property at six places has mentioned that the value of property was not accessed.
One of the officers, who owns 13 kanals of land in Budgam has shown its value Rs 5.5 lakh.
Another officer, who has a house at Gandhi Nagar Jammu, has mentioned its value as few lakh rupees only.
Yet another KAS officer has mentioned Rs 2.25 lakh as the value for his house at Kathua.
A good chunk of KAS officers have also submitted that the cost of their immovable property was not estimated.
Surprisingly, some of these officers who also own property with kanals of land in Srinagar and Jammu, have shown property details less than Rs 30 lakhs.
Meanwhile, an official in the Vigilance wing of GAD said that over 100 KAS officers out of 450 officers have failed to submit their annual property returns of 2017 to the government.
"They should have submitted the APR in January and February as per the rules. There has been delay in submitting the APR," the official said.
"We are preparing the list and those who have not submitted APR will be served show cause notice following which action will be taken as per the rules," the official said. |
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