‘Who Checks If Govt Officials Are Declaring Their Wealth Correctly?’: RTI Activist Explains 4 Key Steps

Imagine a dozen people asked to write down what flats in the same apartment block are worth, and each gives a different figure. That is roughly what an IndiaSpend analysis found among Indian Foreign Service officers.

At least a dozen of them had declared sharply different values for flats in the same apartment block in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar. Each had filed a return as the rules demanded, yet the differences raised an important question: who was checking whether the values were accurate?

“That gap between filing a declaration and proving it honest sits at the centre of how India tries to police the wealth of its public servants. Every public servant covered by the Lokpal law must declare assets and liabilities, but the form is only the first link in a longer chain of checks,” explains L. Chakrapani, a Chennai-based RTI activist and former senior advocate at the Madras High Court.

Someone has to read these returns, compare them with lawful income and act when the numbers don’t add up. Here is how that chain is supposed to work, what the rules actually require today, and where it gets weak.

What officials have to declare

Under Section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013, every public servant covered by the Act is required to declare their assets and liabilities in the form and manner prescribed by the government.

The original law required annual returns by 31 July and directed ministries or departments to publish the statements on their websites by 31 August, as set out in a Department of Personnel and Training order. However, the 2016 amendment replaced Section 44 and removed these specific requirements from the Act.

In December 2016, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said that returns under the amended Lokpal provision did not need to be filed until fresh rules were notified. In September 2022, it confirmed that those rules had still not been issued.

Under the original Lokpal framework, the declaration covered the whole household. It included the assets and liabilities of the officer’s spouse and dependent children.

Officers of the IAS, IPS and Indian Forest Service already had a similar duty under the All India Services conduct rules, which ask for a return on first appointment.

An India Today investigation reported that the return must list immovable property, shares, debentures, postal time deposits, cash including bank deposits, other movable property, and debts and liabilities.

It also noted that the rules cover property held in an officer’s own name, a family member’s name, or anyone else’s name.

These service-specific requirements continue to matter even where the separate Lokpal declaration framework has been delayed. For example, IPS officers must file annual immovable property returns by 31 January under the All India Services conduct rules.

That last part is telling. The rulebook also accounts for the possibility of officers holding wealth through other people, which is why the checks after the form matter as much as the form itself.

Check one: Did the form even arrive?

This is the simplest check, because authorities can identify who has failed to submit a required return.

The Central Vigilance Commission has told central government officials that not filing property returns gives “good and sufficient reasons for instituting disciplinary action”. It expressed deep concern over prolonged delays and in 2020 set 30 November as the deadline for 100% compliance.

Even ministers have been late. Hindustan Times previously reported that 14 cabinet ministers and 21 junior ministers in a 77-strong council had not made their assets public, six weeks after the August deadline for declaring them to the Prime Minister. 

“There should be a mechanism to scrutinise the declarations. Otherwise there is a weakness that every later check tries to fix, since a filed form proves only that someone filled it in,” Chakrapani says.

The distinction matters. Treating a missing return as misconduct means officials can’t wait for an investigation to begin before answering for the omission. Filing also creates a record to measure against later.

“Filing gives authorities a baseline, because every later year can be compared with the one before it. Without that baseline, no one can say that wealth has grown faster than income, which is the question that the criminal law eventually asks,” he explains.

Check two: Are the numbers true?

A form can be complete and still be wrong, which is why the differences reported in the Mayur Vihar declarations deserve scrutiny. IndiaSpend asked whether the real worry was that officers misstated values or “just don’t care”.

For ordinary citizens, even seeing these forms has been a struggle. India Today reported that it took “two years of argument and persuasion” with the Department of Personnel and Training and the Central Information Commission, through the RTI route, to obtain just the immovable assets of around 120 secretary-rank officers.

That was before the Lokpal Act originally introduced a requirement for ministries to publish annual statements. Although the 2016 amendment removed that requirement from Section 44, property returns filed under certain service rules are still published by the relevant departments.

It shows why public access has always been part of the story.

“Realistic verification rests on comparing declarations with independent records, mainly income-tax data, since the CBDT already cross-checks elected representatives’ affidavits and reports any discrepancies.

This rests on the CBDT and Election Commission framework, covered by the Lawyer E-News report, and on the CBDT’s 2017 affidavit to the Supreme Court,” Chakrapani tells The Better India.

For elected representatives, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the Election Commission of India (ECI) have a joint framework for verifying election affidavits.

It allows asset disclosures to be checked against tax information and discrepancies to be investigated, according to a Supreme Court order reported by Lawyer E-News.

In a September 2017 affidavit to the Supreme Court, the CBDT said it had begun investigating seven Lok Sabha members and 98 assembly members after finding discrepancies in their declarations.

The Court had pulled up the government over members whose wealth showed “a massive jump”. The department said details would go to the court in a sealed cover, since income-tax investigations are exempt under the transparency law.

These checks concern election affidavits filed by candidates. They are distinct from the property returns filed by civil servants, although both raise the same question about independent verification.

Check three: What if an official’s wealth grows faster than their income?

Once a discrepancy surfaces, the Prevention of Corruption Act gives investigators a legal test.

The offence has a long history. Section 5(1)(e) of the 1947 Act criminalised property disproportionate to known income, and Section 13(1)(e) of the 1988 Act carried the idea forward before the 2018 amendment recodified it.

Section 13(1)(b), as substituted by an amendment that took effect on 26 July 2018, makes it an offence to enrich oneself illicitly during the period of office.

The law presumes illicit enrichment when a public servant, or anyone on their behalf, holds money or property disproportionate to known sources of income that they cannot satisfactorily account for.

“The Act defines known sources of income as income from lawful sources, which means gifts, loans and savings count only if they can be shown to be lawful.

A conviction carries imprisonment of not less than one year and up to seven years, and a fine,” Chakrapani says.

The current Section 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, however, provides for imprisonment of four to ten years, along with a fine. The punishment was increased from the earlier one-to-seven-year range through an amendment effective from 16 January 2014.

The Lokpal can act too. According to Nyaaya, its inquiry wing conducts an initial inquiry into corruption charges against a public servant, and the Lokpal can then file a case before a Special Court.

PRS Legislative Research notes that the Lokpal holds power of superintendence over the CBI for cases it refers.

This is where the declaration becomes evidence. It records what an officer owned on a given date and who else held property for the family.

“A case can then succeed when investigators rebuild lawful income, loans, gifts and savings across the check period, and fail when that accounting has gaps,” he says, drawing on his own litigation experience.

Check four: Will the evidence hold up in court?

Courts examine disproportionate assets cases in two stages. According to a legal analysis published by Casemine, the prosecution must first establish the disproportion. Only then does the burden shift to the accused to account satisfactorily for the assets.

A High Court ruling reported by Taxguru shows how this plays out. The court set aside the conviction of two public servants in Chennai because the prosecution had not properly accounted for their legitimate income, loans, gifts and savings. It held that the defence had shown the properties came from lawful sources.

A strong case, then, needs more than a list of properties. Investigators must rebuild a full income and expenditure picture across the entire check period.

According to Chakrapani, this is also why accurate declarations matter, since a truthful record of loans and gifts made years earlier can support or undercut a later explanation.

Who is monitoring the growing wealth?

The system has one gap that courts have already noticed.

On 16 February 2018, a Supreme Court bench of Justices J Chelameswar and S Abdul Nazeer directed the creation of a permanent mechanism to monitor the assets of legislators that grow disproportionately to their known income.

The bench said such assets “should alarm citizens and voters of any democratic society”, according to LiveLaw.

The Wire reports that the same bench refused a one-time investigation of named legislators, calling that “selective witch-hunting”. It asked for monitoring of legislators whose assets rose by more than 100% by the next election, with findings reaching the appropriate legislature.

Lok Prahari later filed a contempt petition, arguing that the government had not complied with several directions.

The Wire reported on 24 April 2026 that the Supreme Court had disposed of the petition on 16 April 2026, after finding no wilful disobedience. The permanent mechanism had still not been created eight years after the original judgment.

During the proceedings, the Union government pointed to an existing framework between the ECI and the CBDT for verifying asset disclosures. The Court accepted that contempt had not been established, bringing the proceedings to a close.

In practice, that leaves verification to existing agencies, which act on complaints, tax discrepancies and criminal investigations.

What this means for you

The four checks show the different stages at which an asset declaration can be examined, although they do not necessarily follow one fixed sequence in every case.

The first confirms that officials file, the second tests whether the numbers hold up, the third compares them with lawful income, and the fourth tests the evidence before a judge.

A weak link anywhere can leave a questionable declaration unexamined.

For citizens, the practical test is whether these stages are visible. Published returns, publicly reported verification findings and open court proceedings are among the ways outsiders can observe how the system is working.

The Lokpal Act originally set the 31 July deadline, while other service rules continue to require property declarations. The Prevention of Corruption Act provides criminal penalties for illicit enrichment. The space between them depends on who is willing to read the forms.

A declaration builds accountability only when someone checks it against income and acts on what they find.

Eight years after the Supreme Court called for permanent monitoring of legislators’ wealth, that mechanism remains absent. The question now is whether the existing checks can provide the scrutiny that the Court had sought.

Sources

1. ‘Has Supreme Court Agreed to Bury its Own 2018 Mandate on Legislators’ Assets?’: by for The Wire, Published on 24 April, 2026

2. ‘The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 – Submission of declaration of assets and liabilities by the public servants‘: by Department of Personnel and Training for gconnect.in (office memorandum)

3. ‘Section 13 in The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988‘: by Government of India (as substituted by Act No. 16 of 2018) for Indian Kanoon, Published on 26 July, 2018

4. ‘No Contempt Made Out Against Union For Not Creating Dedicated Cell To Monitor Legislators’ Asset Growth: Supreme Court‘: by [byline to confirm] for Lawyer E-News

5. ‘7 MPs, 98 MLAs under I-T lens over assets declaration‘: By Hindustan Times, Published on 12 September, 2017

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