1 out of every 7 IAS officers in the country claims to have no Asset

IAS & IPS officers are a vital part of the administrative structure in the country. As per their conduct rules, they are supposed to file their Immovable Property Returns annually. As per data available with the DoPT, close to 15% of the IAS officers have defaulted in filing IPR. The compliance of older batches is much better compared to the younger batches. About 15% of the officials who filed their IPR claimed to have no asset.

The All India Service officers are a vital part of the administrative system in the country. The demand for the UPSC Civil Services examinations is well known. Both the IAS & the IPS are coveted posts and there are hardly a couple of hundred posts every year for these services. As per section 16 of the The All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968, every officer is expected to submit an annual return of the immovable property (IPR) owned by him/her, or inherited or acquired or held on lease or mortgage, either in his own name or in the name of any member of his family. They are supposed to file these returns in a standard format as defined by the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT).

What is the status of these returns?

The data on the IPR filed by the IAS officers is available only from the year 2010. As per the data available, there are currently a total of 4526 IAS officers serving in 26 different cadres. Out of these, 3865 officers have filed their IPR for all the five years while the rest 661 have defaulted at least once.

Out of the 661 defaulters, 540 of them have defaulted once. 91 of them have defaulted twice, 18 of them three times, 4 of them four times and 8 of them defaulted all five times.

Which is the Most Compliant Cadre?

The IAS officers from the Maharashtra cadre are the most compliant of all cadres with 96.3% of the officers submitted their IPR. Only 3.7% from this cadre have defaulted at least once. Maharashtra is closely followed by Karnataka cadre with 96.2% followed by Tamil Nadu with 96%. In the fourth place is Rajasthan with 93.8% followed by Kerala in the fifth spot with 93.4%. A total of 8 cadres have more than 90% compliance. Four cadres have less than 70% compliance. Almost half the cadres (12) are below the national average in compliance.

Which is the Most Compliant Batch?

The IAS officers from the 1977 & 1978 batch (oldest batches) are the most compliant of all cadres with each and every officer submitting their IPR. Not even a single officer from these batches has defaulted. These two batches are followed by the 1985 batch with 98.6% compliance, followed by the 1982 batch with 95.2%. In the fifth place is the 2014 batch with 94.9% compliance. It is a bit surprising to note that the newer batches in general fared poorly compared to the older batches. Out of the 11 batches that are below the national average in compliance, 10 of these batches are from the year 2001 to 2014.

Which is the Least Compliant Cadre?

The IAS officers from the Tripura cadre are the least compliant of all cadres with just 61.8% compliance. In other words, almost 2 out of every 5 officers from Tripura defaulted on submission of IPR at least once. The other cadres in the bottom five are Manipur with 62.7% compliance, Andhra Pradesh with 64.1%, Telangana with 68.6% and Nagaland with 75.5%.

Which is the Least Compliant Batch?

All the five batches that are least compliant are from the recent times. At the bottom is the 2013 batch, where only 16.3% officers submitted their IPR. In other words, 84% of the officers from this batch defaulted at least once (either in 2013 or in 2014). The other batches in this list are the 2005 batch with 75.4% compliance, 2006 batch with 78.3%, 2002 batch with 78.6% and 2007 batch with 78.8% compliance.

15% claimed to have no Assets

While the data on the quantum of assets is not available, a total of 559 IAS officers declared ‘NIL’ in their IPR. In other words, these 559 IAS officers claim not to own any asset. This is 14.5% of those who filed their IPR, roughly 1 out of every 7 officials who filed their IPR claimed to have no asset. While a large majority of these officers are from most recent batches, there are quite a few officers from very old batches who claimed to have no assets. An officer from the 1978 batch(the oldest batch), two from the 1979 batch, one each from the 1980, 1981 & 1982 batches claimed to have no assets. More than a handful of them have claimed to have no assets from the batches in the 80s as well as the 90s.

UP leads the list of officers with NIL assets with 57 followed by Madhya Pradesh with 42. AGMUT (Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories) comes next with 37, followed by Maharashtra with 33, Tamil Nadu with 31, Jharkhand with 26 and Gujarat with 25. Except for Tripura & Sikkim cadres, IAS officials with NIL assets are in double digits.

Data as on 05th September, 2015