The remaining 20 percent officials are likely to submit their assets details in a day or two, an official said Tuesday.

Nitish Kumar had declared a war against corruption after becoming chief minister for the second consecutive term in November last year.

"It is a part of the initial move of Nitish Kumar to weed out corruption," an official in Chief Minister's Office said.

Deepak Kumar, principal secretary of general administration department, told IANS that majority of government officials from the block level office to district headquarters and state secretariat had submitted their assets details till Monday night.

"The state government will make all the government officials' assets public in the next two to three days and post it on the government official site," Kumar said.

"Fearing that their salaries could be withheld if they don't declare their assets, the government officials submitted their assets details Feb 28, the last day of the deadline," an official said.

The state government in its circular early this year warned officials that their salaries would be withheld if they failed to furnish the assets details within the stipulated time frame.

Setting an example, the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues declared their assets Dec 31. The details are posted on the state government's official website.

Soon after assuming office following a historic poll verdict last year, Nitish Kumar announced that corruption will not be tolerated in the state. Bihar is also working to confiscate the properties of corrupt officials and turn these into primary schools.

Last December, a special court ordered confiscation of property of former motor vehicles inspector Raghuvansh Kunwar. The government has directed that a school be opened in Kunwar's house at Chaira village in Samastipur district.

Kunwar was allegedly caught while accepting a bribe of Rs.50,000 Sep 24, 2008 when he was the motor vehicles inspector of Aurangabad district.

The government last year put in place the Special Courts Act that will enable it to confiscate the properties of corrupt officials.

Six special courts, two each in Patna, Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur, were constituted by the government with the permission of the Patna High Court for speedy trial of cases involving a total sum of over Rs.25 crore.

Comment

comments...

Another Milestone !? Some Questions, Some Suggestions

Questions

1 How will the officers/employees be punished? And how will the properties
be confiscated? ( In the wake of Kunwar's case the Patna HC observed
- how would anybody decide that a person had acquired/constructed any
movable property with illegally earned money.

2 How much money has been provided/allocated for the collection of data
and trial of the cases ( certainly to be lodged )? As it will be a huge exercise.

3 As there are millions of cases pending in the courts and the State being the
biggest litigant, how many judicial officers have been recruited , as there would
be plethora of cases?

4 Has the State govt. constituted a special cadre of officers for collection of data,
as collection would be continuous process? Corruption can only be unearthed
when there is a comparative analysis.

5 Who will be the authority to authenticate the details collected - banks or IT
department or any other authority?

6 Which authority will examine, how many bank accounts,investments,property,a
person has and at which place(s)?

7 What about movable properties? What about the money deposited in bank
accounts of spouses, relatives et al? ( As seen in NALCO Chief's and Joshi IAS
couple's cases)

Suggestions

1 The bank account statement should be taken of last five years.

2 Movable property records must be taken along with . ( LCD TVs, phones, cars etc.)

3 Social Audit of the progress made in weeding out corruption should be allowed and
made compulsory, mere media audit is not sufficient.
4 The data should be collected on a monthly basis and be put in public domain. ( put
it on website)
5 Next in line should be the builders, contractors, business class and media.

Let's see how things take shape. Five or six months down the line it would become
clear whether we were being fooled or not. I have no hope from these political gimmicks.

Raj Gayawala
Delhi, India