Only 22 forest officers post returns online

Two years after the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directed that immovable property returns of officers belonging

Two years after the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directed that immovable property returns of officers belonging to the all-India services,IAS,IPS and Indian Forest Service IFoS,be made available online,only 22 per cent of the IFoS cadre have complied.

Returns of most of the IAS and IPS officers are now in the public domain on the services websites. The Ministry for Environment and Forests is the cadre controlling authority for IFoS officers.

So far,only 479 officers of the 2,200 in IFoS have posted their immovable property returns on the MoEF website. The returns for 2011 were supposed to be submitted by the officers by January 31,2012. In 2010,the record was slightly better as 937 officers or 42 per cent had made their returns available online.

Among the IAS,of the around 4,300 officers,only 79 are defaulters as per the DoPT website which updates their list daily. The IPS record is not so bad either,with only 128 of 3,325 having failed to post their returns.

A senior MoEF officer said some more IFoS members had submitted their returns. We have sent scanned copies to the National Informatics Centre. They will put them up very soon.

The move started in February 2010 with DoPT Secretary Shantanu Consul sending a letter to all three All India Services saying: The objective is to set a standard which may not be presently prescribed by law but is likely to advance the cause of transparent and accountable bureaucracy. In such matters,All India Services should take the lead and walk the extra mile.

Interestingly,while Consul mentioned the Madhya Pradesh initiative in this regard,merely 27 IFoS officers of 293 from the state cadre have so far posted their returns.

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An RTI plea filed by The Indian Express shows that the MoEF has issued repeated reminders to the officers concerned to submit their IPRs on time. While the last date of submission for 2011 was January 31,the ministry kept issuing reminders till March. The latest IPRs put in public domain were on June 18.