The Central Government has, for the third time, extended the deadline for the mandatory filing of statement of assets and liabilities by bureaucrats under the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act 2013.

The Department of Personnel and Training in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension on Sunday notified the extension of the deadline for filing the assets statement for the years 2014 and 2015 to April 15, 2016. The previous extension of the deadline was to end on October 15. Prior to that, extension the deadline had been set was set for April 30.

Anti-corruption weapon

The extension is applicable to the entire central civil service and public sector undertakings.

Section 44 of the Act – which came into force on January 16, 2014 – mandates that every public servant should file his/her assets-and-liabilities statement within 30 days of the coming into force of the Act.

It also mandates that fresh public servants should file their statements within 30 days of joining the service. And, Section 44 (4) says: “Every public servant shall file with the competent authority, on or before the 31st July of every year, an annual return of such assets and liabilities...as on the 31st March of that year.”

Asset details

The statement was to contain “information relating to — (a) the assets of which he, his spouse and his dependent children are, jointly or severally, owners or beneficiaries; (b) his liabilities and that of his spouse and his dependent children.”

Kochi-based right-to-information activist DB Binu has alleged that the bureaucracy had colluded to give extension after extension for helping the public servants to evade accountability.

“The main objective of the Lokpal and Lokayukta Act is to curtail corruption,” he told BusinessLine. “Section 44 of the Act is the main weapon to fight bureaucratic corruption and bribery.” By giving such long extensions, the government was helping to foil the very purpose of the Act, he said.

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