14 IAS officers from Telugu states fail to submit annual immovable property returns

HYDERABAD: As many as 14 IAS officers from Telugu states are among the 349 civil service officers across the country who have not submitted their annual immovable property returns for the year 2020 within the stipulated time limit. Of these, eight are from Andhra Pradesh and six from Telangana.

There are also a few IAS officers who have not filed their returns for the previous years 2019 and 2018, too. As per All India Services (Conduct) Rule, 1968, all civil service officials are required to submit their returns in January every year.

A parliamentary standing committee recently called for stringent action other than denial of vigilance clearance against the officers who failed to submit their returns. It has also recommended the DoPT and the CVC to increase surveillance on such officials.

According to the official data available with the Centre's Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which deals with service matters of IAS, the six officers who did not file returns are KY Naik, M V Reddy, P Venkata Rami Reddy (Siddipet collector), RV Karnan (Khammam collector), T Vinay Krishna Reddy (Suryapet collector) and Sandeep Kumar Jha.

The eight officers from AP include chief secretary Aditya Nath Das, Budithi Rajsekhar, I Srinivas Srinaresh, K Dhananjaya Reddy, P Basanth Kumar, TK Rama Mani, D Markandeyulu and R Mahesh Kumar.

For the year 2019 too, four IAS officers from Telangana did not file their returns. They are G Kishan, N Satyanarayana, D Amoy Kumar and VP Gautham.

From AP, there are 10 IAS officers in this category. They are JS Venkateswara Prasad, R Karikal Valaven, K Vijayanand, I Srinivas Srinaresh, K Ramgopal, Muddada Ravi Chandra, Shashi Bhushan Kumar, B Sreedhar, Kanti Lal Dande and KV Ramana.

Surprisingly, there are 10 officers each from Telangana and AP who failed to file returns even for 2018. No action has been taken against the errant.

The Union Ministry of Personnel issued an order in January this year asking IAS officers to submit details of their immovable assets by January 31, failing which they could face disciplinary action.

It said the rules provide that every member of the service shall submit by January 31 an annual return giving full particulars of the immovable property inherited by him, owned or acquired by him or held by him on lease or mortgage, either in his own name or in the name of any member of his family or in the name of any other person.

"Failure on the part of the members of the service to comply with the requirements of the aforesaid provisions constitutes good and sufficient reason for institution of disciplinary proceedings, among other things," said the order.

In order to facilitate the filing of details, th DoPT had introduced online filing of immovable property returns (IPR) in respect of lAS officers from January 1, 2017 through the module designed for the purpose. "Through this module, the officers can submit the IPR either
electronically or upload scanned copy of the manually filled in IPR," said the order.

This online module closes automatically after the prescribed timeline of 31st January, 2021 in respect of the calendar year 2020. The officers need not send a hard copy either to their cadre or to the DoPT.

"(We) would, therefore, request you to kindly issue necessary instructions to all lAS officers working in your ministry and its various departments to ensure that they submit their IPRs for the year 2020 (as on 01.01.2021) online in the IPR module, as per the prescribed timeline,” secretaries of all central government departments and chief secretaries of state governments have been told.

As many as 5,205 IAS officers are working across the country against the sanctioned strength of 6,715, according to DoPT data.