Immovable Property Return

The immovable property return is the annual statement of land and buildings that a Group A or Group B central government servant files under Rule 18(1)(ii) of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, disclosing every immovable property inherited, owned, acquired, or held on lease or mortgage, whether in the servant’s own name, in the name of a member of the family, or in the name of any other person. The position is taken as on 1 January and the return is due by 31 January.

Rule 18 does more than require that one return. It also obliges a servant to file a return of assets and liabilities on first appointment, to give the prescribed authority previous knowledge before acquiring or disposing of immovable property, to obtain previous sanction where the counterparty has official dealings, to report a movable property transaction above two months’ basic pay within a month, and to produce a full statement of property and its source of funding whenever the Government calls for one. The annual return is the most visible of these duties, and the one that catches the largest number of otherwise clean employees.

The cost of missing it is administrative rather than penal. Paragraph 8(k) of Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024 denies vigilance clearance to an officer who has not filed the previous year’s return by 31 January, and that single denial blocks empanelment, deputation, posting to a sensitive post, confirmation in service, ex-India study leave, voluntary retirement and post-retirement commercial employment. In a written answer in the Lok Sabha on 18 July 2018, the Minister of State for Personnel stated that vigilance clearance had been denied to 80 officers between 1 January 2017 and 31 March 2018 for late filing or failure to file property returns.

This article sets out the structure of Rule 18 and each of the duties it creates, who counts as a member of the family, the eight-column proforma and the bar on writing “no change”, the previous-knowledge and previous-sanction distinction, the thirty-day deemed permission, the treatment of inherited property and a joint family share, the parallel obligation of All India Services officers under Rule 16 of their own Conduct Rules, the consequences of a default, the unresolved conflict between two Department of Personnel and Training instructions on whether a default reaches promotion, and why the asset declaration promised by Section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 has never actually been demanded.

Structure of Rule 18

Rule 18 is headed “Movable, immovable and valuable property” and sits in the part of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 that governs a servant’s financial dealings, next to Rule 13 on gifts and Rule 16 on investment, lending and borrowing. The rules are made under the proviso to Article 309 of the Constitution, so a breach of Rule 18 is a breach of a statutory rule, not of an administrative instruction.

Five sub-rules and one free-standing rule carry the whole scheme.

Two Explanations complete the rule. Explanation I defines movable property and identifies the prescribed authority. Explanation II defines a lease, for the purposes of the rule, as a lease of immovable property from year to year, or for any term exceeding one year, or reserving a yearly rent, except where the lease is obtained from or granted to a person having official dealings with the servant. Explanation II and the whole of Rule 18-A were inserted by Notification No. 25/57/64-Ests(A) dated 5 January 1973, published as S.O. 83 dated 13 January 1973, which also substituted the words “radiograms and television sets” in the movable property list.

The last substantive change to Rule 18 came through G.S.R. 370(E) dated 9 May 2011, which substituted sub-rule (3) and replaced a flat rupee threshold for a movable property transaction with two months’ basic pay. It is the fourteenth and final entry in the Department of Personnel and Training’s own amendment table for Rule 18. The Rules have been amended since, most recently by G.S.R. 531(E) dated 29 July 2019, the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Amendment Rules, 2019, on file No. 11013/02/2019-Estt.A-III, but that notification amended Rule 3 on sexual harassment and left Rule 18 untouched.

Nothing has amended the text of Rule 18 or Rule 18-A in the fifteen years since May 2011. Everything that has changed about the return in that period, including its deadline, its forms, its online delivery and its vigilance consequence, has changed through executive instructions issued under the rule rather than through the rule itself. A reader tracing an obligation to its source therefore has to read the rule and the Office Memorandum together, and the memorandum is where almost every operative date lives.

The annual return under Rule 18(1)(ii)

The operative words are narrow, and the reader is better served by the text than by a paraphrase of it:

“Every Government servant belonging to any service or holding any post included in Group ‘A’ and Group ‘B’ shall submit an annual return in such form as may be prescribed by the Government in this regard giving full particulars regarding the immovable property inherited by him or 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.”

Three features of that sentence do the work. The obligation attaches to the group of the post, not to the seniority or the pay of the person holding it. The subject matter is immovable property alone, so shares, deposits and vehicles have no place in this return. And the reach extends past the servant’s own name to property held by a family member, and past that to property held in the name of “any other person”, which is the limb that catches a benami holding.

Who the rule covers

Group A and Group B officers are covered by the rule text. A Group A officer of the Central Secretariat Service, a Group B gazetted officer of a subordinate office, and a Group B non-gazetted officer are all inside it. The Central Secretariat Service requires filing from Under Secretary level upwards through its own cadre management system.

The text of Rule 18(1)(ii) does not reach Group C, and this is the most confused point in the whole area. Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/7/2014-Estt.(A-III) dated 26 October 2015 required the annual property return for 2015 from all government servants belonging to Group A, Group B, Group C and erstwhile Group D, as a one-year fix after the Lokpal forms proved unworkable. Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023 goes back to describing the obligation as one on “all Group ‘A’ and Group ‘B’ Government servants”. Neither the 2015 instruction nor its follow-up has been withdrawn, so there is no single national answer for Group C, and any source that gives one is over-claiming.

The extension rests on Rule 18(4), not on the rule that creates the annual return. Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/7/2014-Estt.A-III dated 5 January 2016 states the basis in terms: the returns are required from Group A, Group B, Group C and erstwhile Group D “in terms of Rule 18(4) of the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 which empowers the Government to require a Government servant to submit a statement of movable or immovable property as may be specified in the order”. That is a stronger footing than it first appears. Rule 18(4) is the one sub-rule expressly carved out of the Rule 18(5) exemption power, so an obligation created under it cannot be exempted away for any category of employee, however junior.

The practical answer for a Group C employee is therefore the instruction issued by the employing department. The Central Secretariat Service requires the return from Assistant Section Officers and Section Officers as well as from Under Secretaries and above, under F. No. 26/01/2018-CS.I (PR/CMS) dated 20 December 2019.

The as-on date and the 31 January deadline

Neither date is in the rule. Rule 18(1)(ii) prescribes an annual return “in such form as may be prescribed” and stops there, leaving the timing to executive instruction.

The clearest statement of the as-on date is on the All India Services side. Ministry of Home Affairs communication No. 8/9/60-AIS(III) dated 16 February 1960, printed as Instruction 2 below Rule 16 of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968, states it plainly: the initial return shows the position as on the date of appointment, and subsequent returns as on 1 January of the year in which they are submitted. For the Central Civil Services the same convention is carried in the titles of the Department of Personnel and Training’s own annual circulars, which run “IPR for the year 2025 (as on 01.01.2026)”.

Three orders set the deadline today. Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023 states that all Group A and Group B government servants are required to file the annual immovable property return of the previous year by 31 January of the following year, invariably. D.O. No. 11013/17/2023-PP.A-III dated 30 December 2024, from the Additional Secretary, restates the obligation and directs returns for 2024 by 31 January 2025. Paragraph 8(k) of Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024 denies vigilance clearance to an officer who “fails to submit annual Immovable Property Return of the previous year” by 31 January of the current year, “as required under Rule 18 of the CCS (Conduct) Rule, 1964”.

The last two formulations describe the same date from opposite ends. A return for calendar year 2026 states the position as on 1 January 2027 and is due by 31 January 2027, which is both “31 January of the following year” and “31 January of the current year” depending on which year is being named.

The two ways of expressing the same instant

The Central Secretariat Service dates the position from the other side of midnight. Every CS.I circular is titled “IPR for the year 2019 (as on 31.12.2019)”, where the Department of Personnel and Training circulars for the Indian Administrative Service are titled “IPR for the year 2024 (as on 01.01.2025)”.

Nothing turns on the difference. The close of 31 December and the start of 1 January are the same instant, and a return stating either date for the same year covers the same holdings. An officer who moves between a Central Secretariat Service post and a cadre post will see both conventions and should not read the change as a change in the period covered.

The proforma and its eight columns

The Department of Personnel and Training publishes a blank proforma headed “Statement of immovable property return for the year ____ as on //____”, with header fields for the name of the officer, the service, the cadre and batch, and the present pay. Eight columns follow, and each of them is an evidentiary hook rather than a formality:

1. Name of the district, sub-division, taluk and village or city in which the property is situated, with the full postal address.
2. Name and details of the property: housing, lands and other buildings.
3. Cost of construction or acquisition, and the year of purchase, including the cost of the land in the case of a house.
4. Present value.
5. If not held in the servant’s own name, the name of the holder and that person’s relationship to the government servant.
6. How acquired, whether by purchase, lease, mortgage, inheritance, gift or otherwise, with the date of acquisition and the name and details of the person from whom it was acquired.
7. Annual income from the property.
8. Remarks.

The notes on the form matter as much as the columns. Where the value cannot be assessed accurately, an approximate value in relation to present conditions may be given. “Lease” in column 6 includes short-term leases. All India Services officers fill the form in duplicate. And note 4 directs that the wording “No Change or No Addition or As in previous year” “may be avoided and all details filled up”, which is the one instruction most frequently ignored. A return that says only “no change” is not a return of full particulars, and the officer who files it has not discharged Rule 18(1)(ii).

Column 6 and column 7 are the ones an investigating agency reads first. Column 6 states the mode of acquisition and the person it was acquired from, which is the officer’s own account of provenance. Column 7 states the annual income from the property, which feeds the income side of any later comparison of assets against income.

The return of assets and liabilities on first appointment

Rule 18(1)(i) is a different filing from the annual return, and applies to a wider class. Every government servant, on first appointment to any service or post, submits a return of assets and liabilities giving full particulars of immovable property inherited, owned, acquired or held on lease or mortgage; of shares, debentures and cash including bank deposits; of other movable property; and of debts and other liabilities incurred directly or indirectly. Note 1 states that the sub-rule does not ordinarily apply to Group D servants unless the Government directs otherwise.

Two thresholds sit in the notes. Items of movable property worth less than Rs. 10,000 may be added together and shown as a lump sum, under Note II as inserted by S.O. 3132 dated 26 December 1992, and articles of daily use such as clothes, utensils, crockery and books need not be included at all. The Rs. 10,000 figure has not been revised, and it did not move when the equivalent All India Services figure was converted to two months’ basic pay by G.S.R. 363(E) dated 5 May 2011.

Timing comes from the Cabinet Secretariat order on file No. 25/7/65-Ests.(A) dated 6 January 1973, issued under Rule 18(1). Clause (b)(i) fixes it: the first return shows the position as on the date of appointment and is submitted within three months of that date. A proviso to the same clause relieves a servant of a subsequent return falling due less than six months later. The order also prescribed a further return at five-yearly intervals, on or before 31 March and as on the preceding 31 December, and directed at clause (d) that “every such return shall be handled as secret document and the provisions of rule 11 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, shall, as far as may be, apply thereto”.

A servant already in one civil service who is appointed to another files no fresh return under Note III, and a probationer files on appointment like anyone else. All India Services officers face a tighter clock for the same filing: Instruction 2 below Rule 16 of their Conduct Rules requires the first return within one month of appointment, against the three months allowed under the Central Civil Services order.

Prior intimation and previous sanction for an immovable property transaction

Rule 18(2) is the provision most often misdescribed. Its opening words are a prohibition on acting without previous knowledge, not on acting without permission:

“No Government servant shall, except with the previous knowledge of the prescribed authority, acquire or dispose of any immovable property by lease, mortgage, purchase, sale, gift or otherwise either in his own name or in the name of any member of his family: Provided that the previous sanction of the prescribed authority shall be obtained by the Government servant if any such transaction is with a person having official dealing with him.”

Previous knowledge against previous sanction

The default is intimation. A government servant buying a flat from a builder with whom the servant has no official dealings gives prior intimation in Form I and may complete the transaction; no approval has to be received, and none has to be waited for beyond the intimation itself. The rule bars a transaction of which the prescribed authority has no knowledge, not a transaction of which it has not approved.

Sanction becomes necessary in two situations. The proviso to Rule 18(2) requires previous sanction where the transaction is with a person having official dealings with the servant, which is the conflict-of-interest case the rule exists to catch. Rule 18-A requires previous sanction in every case where the property is situated outside India or the counterparty is a foreigner, a foreign government, or a foreign organisation.

The distinction has practical bite because the two routes behave differently when the department stays silent. An intimation is complete once given. A request for sanction is not complete until it is granted, or until the deemed-permission period runs out.

Form I, Form II and the thirty-day lead time

Form I is the combined form for giving prior intimation or seeking previous sanction under Rule 18(2), prescribed by Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/2/2018-Estt.A-III dated 17 December 2018. Its twelve items ask for the purpose of the application, whether the servant proposes to acquire or to dispose of, the probable date, the mode of the transaction, the full location and description of the property, whether the interest is freehold or leasehold and full or partial, the ownership shares where the property is not held exclusively by the servant, the sale or purchase price or the market value in the case of a gift, and the sources from which the transaction is to be financed, separated into personal savings and other sources.

Several of the items are aimed squarely at conflict of interest: the name and address of the counterparty, whether the counterparty is related to the servant, whether the servant has had or is likely to have official dealings with the counterparty, and how the transaction was arranged. Item 11 asks whether sanction is also required under Rule 13, which is the gift rule, and item 12 catches any other relevant fact. The form closes with a declaration in two alternative forms, one for a request for permission and one for a bare intimation, and the servant strikes out whichever does not apply.

The same memorandum prescribes Form II, the parallel form for a movable property transaction under Rule 18(3). The two forms are regularly confused because they are annexed to one order, but they answer different sub-rules: Form I precedes an immovable property transaction, Form II follows a movable property transaction within a month.

Note 3 to Form I fixes the lead time: “Where previous sanction is asked for, the application should be submitted at least 30 days before the proposed date of the transaction.” This is a submission deadline for the employee, and it is routinely confused with the deemed-permission window, which is a separate instrument with a different source and a different effect.

Repairs and minor construction are covered by paragraph 2 of the same memorandum of 17 December 2018, which superseded Office Memorandum No. 11013/9/89-Estt.(A) dated 27 November 1990. Intimation to the prescribed authority is required where the estimated expenditure exceeds the Rule 18(3) limit, and prior sanction is required in all cases regardless of amount where the purchase of material or the repair contract is with a person having official dealings with the employee. The All India Services route is more formal still: Instructions 4 and 5 below Rule 16 of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968 require a report in Form IV before construction or extension begins and a further report in Form V after completion, and require the officer to state whether a contractor is involved and whether the officer has official dealings with that contractor.

Inheritance, ancestral property and a joint family share

Property that arrives by inheritance cannot be preceded by a prior intimation, and Rule 18 does not pretend otherwise. Rule 18(1)(ii) requires the annual return to give full particulars of immovable property “inherited by him” alongside property owned or acquired, so an inherited holding enters the system through the annual return rather than through a Form I filed before the event. Rule 18(2) bites on the acts a servant chooses to do, acquiring or disposing by lease, mortgage, purchase, sale or gift, and a succession opening on a death is none of those.

A share in joint family property is reportable even where the share has never been partitioned. Ministry of Home Affairs U.O. No. 6/34/57-AIS(II) dated 7 May 1957, printed as Instruction 3 below Rule 16 of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968, states that an officer holding a share in joint family property is required to report that share, and must obtain permission for its disposal where permission would otherwise be required. The same reasoning carries to Rule 18, whose opening words reach inherited property and whose proforma provides, at column 5, for a holding that is not in the servant’s own name.

The disposal side is where the duty reasserts itself. Selling an inherited flat, or releasing an undivided share to a co-parcener, is a disposal by sale or otherwise within Rule 18(2), and it needs previous knowledge of the prescribed authority before it happens. An officer who correctly declares an inherited property in the annual return for years, and then sells it without intimation, has complied with one sub-rule and breached another.

Deemed permission after thirty days

Office Memorandum No. 11013/2/88-Estt.(A) dated 7 July 1988, issued in supersession of the earlier instruction of 19 April 1978, sets the time limits within which a competent authority must decide a request for permission under the Conduct Rules.

The Rule 19(1) figure no longer comes from the 1988 order, which had set it at six weeks. Notification G.S.R. 355 dated 29 July 1995, which also inserted Rules 3-A and 3-B, inserted a proviso into Rule 19(1) itself, stating that where no sanction is received within three months from the date the Government receives the request, the employee is free to assume that permission has been granted. A proviso in the CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964 displaces an administrative time limit in an Office Memorandum, so three months is the operative period.

The time limits run from the date the request is received, not from the date it was posted, and the 1988 order directs that an acknowledgement showing the date of receipt be given to the employee whenever a request is received. On the consequence of silence the order is unambiguous: “In the event of failure on the part of the competent authority to communicate its decision to the Government employee concerned within the time-limits indicated above, the employee concerned shall be free to assume that permission has been granted to him.”

Two points on scope. The deeming clause attaches to permission, so it has work to do only where the rule actually requires sanction; in the ordinary Rule 18(2) case, where all that is needed is previous knowledge, there is no permission to be deemed and the transaction may proceed once intimation has been given. And the 1988 order was itself issued in supersession of Office Memorandum No. 11013/17/77-Estt.(A) dated 19 April 1978, so a departmental note still citing the 1978 instruction is citing a superseded order.

Rule 18-A: property outside India and transactions with foreigners

Rule 18-A opens with a non obstante clause displacing Rule 18(2), and requires previous sanction of the prescribed authority before a government servant acquires immovable property situated outside India, disposes of such property, or enters into any transaction with a foreigner, a foreign government, or a foreign organisation or concern for the acquisition or disposal of immovable property.

Three features distinguish it from Rule 18(2). It admits no intimation route, so an inherited overseas flat still needs sanction. It carries no value threshold, so a small holding is treated the same as a large one. And it is triggered by the identity of the counterparty as much as by the location of the property, so a transaction over Indian property with a foreign national falls inside it. The corresponding provision for All India Services officers is Rule 16-A of their Conduct Rules.

Movable property under Rule 18(3)

Rule 18(3) is transaction-driven rather than periodic. Where a government servant enters into a transaction in movable property, in the servant’s own name or in the name of a family member, the transaction must be reported to the prescribed authority within one month of the date of the transaction if the value of the property exceeds two months’ basic pay. The same proviso as in Rule 18(2) applies: previous sanction is required where the transaction is with a person having official dealings.

There is no annual movable property return. An employee who buys nothing above the threshold in a calendar year files nothing under this sub-rule, however many immovable property returns are due.

What counts as movable property

Explanation I(1) gives the list, and it is closed enough to be useful and old enough to show its age:

• Jewellery, insurance policies the annual premia of which exceed two months’ basic pay, shares, securities and debentures.
• All loans, whether secured or not, advanced or taken by the government servant.
• Motor cars, motor cycles, horses, or any other means of conveyance.
• Refrigerators, radios, radiograms and television sets.

The insurance limb is the one most often missed: the threshold there is applied to the annual premium, not to the sum assured. The loan limb covers borrowing as well as lending, so a large personal loan taken from an individual is reportable in the same way as a loan advanced.

The two months’ basic pay threshold

Rule 18(3) says “two months’ basic pay of the Government servant” and stops there. It does not define basic pay, and no Office Memorandum issued under it does. Read against the pay matrix, the natural reading is the basic pay of the cell the servant occupies, excluding dearness allowance and every other allowance, but that reading is an inference from the pay structure rather than a definition supplied by the rule.

On that reading the threshold moves upward with every increment and with every pay commission revision, which is why the figure differs so widely across levels in the 7th Central Pay Commission structure: an employee at the entry cell of Level 1, on Rs. 18,000, reports a transaction above Rs. 36,000, while an officer on Rs. 1,44,200 at the entry cell of Level 14 reports only above Rs. 2,88,400.

G.S.R. 370(E) dated 9 May 2011 replaced a flat rupee threshold with this pay-linked one. The figure it replaced on the All India Services side is on the record: G.S.R. 363(E) dated 5 May 2011 substituted “two months basic pay of the member of Service” for “Rs.15,000/-” in Rule 16(4), and for “fifteen thousand rupees or one sixth of the total annual emoluments received by the member of the Service from the Government, whichever is less” in Explanation I. Sources quoting Rs. 10,000 as the movable property threshold are quoting the wrong figure for the wrong rule: Rs. 10,000 survives, correctly, as the lump-sum floor in Note II to Rule 18(1), which is a different provision doing a different job.

A separate and adjacent obligation arises from Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/6/2018-Estt.A-III dated 7 February 2019. Where the total transactions in shares, securities, debentures or mutual fund schemes exceed six months’ basic pay during a calendar year, an intimation must be sent to the prescribed authority in the annexed proforma by 31 January of the subsequent calendar year. That memorandum replaced the flat limits in Office Memorandum No. 11013/6/91-Estt.(A) dated 8 April 1992, which had set Rs. 50,000 for Group A and Group B and Rs. 25,000 for Group C and Group D.

The two thresholds operate together rather than in the alternative, which is the point most often missed. Paragraph 3 of the 2019 memorandum confirms that shares, securities and debentures are movable property for Rule 18(3), so a single share transaction above two months’ basic pay is reportable within a month under Rule 18(3), while the aggregate of a year’s transactions above six months’ basic pay is separately reportable by 31 January. An officer can breach one without breaching the other. The All India Services twin is F. No. 11017/01/2016-AIS-III dated 20 March 2023, issued under Rule 14(1) of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968.

Powers to call for a statement and to exempt

Rule 18(4) allows the Government or the prescribed authority, at any time and by general or special order, to require a government servant to furnish within a specified period a full and complete statement of movable or immovable property held or acquired by the servant, on the servant’s behalf, or by a family member. The order may also require details of the means by which, or the source from which, the property was acquired.

This is the provision that turns the annual return from a filing exercise into an investigative tool. The annual return asks how a property was acquired; a Rule 18(4) order asks where the money came from, on pain of a further breach if the statement is not furnished within the period specified. It is the natural first formal step where a chief vigilance officer has a complaint but no case, and it commonly precedes a preliminary inquiry into disproportionate assets.

Rule 18(5) carries the counterweight. The Government may exempt any category of Group C or Group D servants from any of the provisions of Rule 18 except sub-rule (4), and the sub-rule closes: “No such exemption shall, however, be made without the concurrence of the Cabinet Secretariat (Department of Personnel).” Sub-rule (4) is expressly carved out of the exemption power, so no category of employee, however junior, can be placed beyond a demand for a full statement of property and its source.

Both Rule 18(5) and the prescribed-authority table in Explanation I(2) still speak of Group D, a classification abolished when the surviving Group D posts were upgraded to Group C on the 6th Central Pay Commission restructuring. The words have never been removed. They are a drafting fossil rather than a live category, and an instruction that recites “Group C and erstwhile Group D”, as the memorandum of 26 October 2015 does, is acknowledging exactly that.

Prescribed authority, deputation and foreign service

Explanation I(2) identifies the prescribed authority by the group of the post held. For a Group A post it is the Government itself, except where a lower authority has been specifically specified. For a Group B post it is the head of the department. For a Group C or Group D post it is the head of office.

Deputation and foreign service are dealt with separately, and the answer is the parent department in both cases. Explanation I(2)(b) states that for a government servant on foreign service, or on deputation to any other ministry or any other government, the prescribed authority is the parent department on whose cadre the servant is borne, or the ministry to which the servant is administratively subordinate as a member of that cadre. The custody arrangement follows the same logic on the All India Services side, where Ministry of Home Affairs Office Memorandum No. 18/2/55-AIS(III) dated 23 May 1956, read with letter No. 12(2)-E.O. III/69 dated 13 November 1959, directs that returns be kept in separate folders in safe custody and scrutinised by the Deputy Secretary (Vigilance).

The practical consequence for an officer on deputation is that the return goes home, not to the borrowing organisation, and that a borrowing organisation’s silence is no defence to a default. For an All India Services officer the arrangement is symmetrical: the return is filed with the cadre controlling authority, with a copy to the parent cadre government while on central deputation and to the Central Government while serving in the cadre State.

Members of family under Rule 2(c)

Because Rule 18 reaches property held in the name of a family member, the definition in Rule 2(c) decides how far the return extends. It brings in three classes.

The first is the spouse: the wife or husband of the government servant, whether residing with the government servant or not. The only exclusion is a spouse separated from the government servant by a decree or order of a competent court. Physical separation, however long-standing, does not take a spouse outside the definition, and the words “whether residing with the Government servant or not” are there to close exactly that argument.

The second is a son, daughter, step-son or step-daughter who is wholly dependent on the government servant. The definition expressly excludes a child or step-child who is no longer in any way dependent, or of whose custody the government servant has been deprived by or under any law. An adult child in independent employment is therefore outside the return, and the property of that child is not disclosable under Rule 18.

The third is any other person related to the government servant, or to the servant’s spouse, by blood or marriage, and wholly dependent on the government servant. A dependent parent, brother or sister falls here.

The qualifier “wholly dependent” governs the second and third classes but not the first. A spouse is inside the definition on the strength of the marriage alone, regardless of independent income, which is why a working spouse’s flat is a routine entry in the annual return and its omission is a routine charge.

Online filing systems

There is no single national portal. Filing arrangements differ by service, and the mandatory ones carry their own consequences for a return submitted any other way.

There is no Department of Personnel and Training portal that a central civil servant outside these cadres files through. Neither the memorandum of 14 July 2023 nor the D.O. of 30 December 2024 names a system; both leave the mode to the cadre controlling authority. An employee looking for a national equivalent of SPARROW will not find one, and the correct question is which instruction the employing department has issued.

The Indian Police Service instruction of 11 December 2023 is the strictest of the set. It records that an immovable property return filed in any other form “shall not be accepted”, and that “no request for condonation of delay in filing of IPR will be entertained by the Ministry of Home Affairs”. An officer who misses the window has no late-filing route; the default stands and the vigilance consequence follows. The Central Secretariat Service instruction is drafted in the same spirit, recording that returns received beyond the stipulated date shall not be regarded as conforming to the extant guidelines.

The Department of Personnel and Training also publishes the returns filed by IAS officers, together with a list of officers who have not yet submitted them.

All India Services: Rule 16 of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968

Officers of the All India Services do not file under Rule 18. Their obligation sits in Rule 16 of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968, which follows the same architecture with several material differences.

The first row is the one that changes the answer most often. Rule 16(2), as substituted by Notification No. 11017/45/76-AIS(III) dated 11 January 1978, published as G.S.R. No. 151 dated 28 January 1978, opens “Every member of the Service”, with no group qualifier at all, because the All India Services form a single class and have no Group A or Group B division to draw on. Writing that the All India Services rule mirrors “Group A and Group B” imports a concept that does not exist in it.

The second row matters where an officer is serving in a State. Rule 16(3) requires the previous knowledge of the Government, not of a prescribed authority, so the intimation is routed to the cadre controlling authority rather than to a head of department.

The fourth row is a divergence that was created and then left in place. Notification G.S.R. 363(E) dated 5 May 2011, the All India Services (Conduct) Amendment Rules, 2011 on file No. 11017/5-A/2011-AIS(III), converted the All India Services lump-sum floor and the movable-property threshold to two months’ basic pay four days before G.S.R. 370(E) converted the CCS movable-property threshold, but the CCS lump-sum floor in Note II to Rule 18(1) was left at Rs. 10,000 and remains there. Instructions printed under Rule 16 in the official compilation still quote the pre-2011 figure of Rs. 15,000 in places; the rule text, not the instruction, is the current position.

The 31 January deadline for All India Services officers comes from Department of Personnel and Training communication No. 11017/74/93-AIS(III) dated 4 January 1994, which asked State Governments to see that returns are submitted for every calendar year by 31 January of the next year, and added that “failure on the part of the members of the Service to comply with the requirements of the aforesaid rules constitutes good and sufficient reason for institution of disciplinary proceedings against them.”

Consequences of a default

Vigilance clearance under paragraph 8(k)

The vigilance consequence was created by Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 11012/11/2007-Estt.A dated 27 September 2011, which recorded a decision that officers who have not submitted the annual immovable property returns by the prescribed time would be denied vigilance clearance and would not be considered for empanelment for senior level posts in the Government of India. It gave effect to that decision by inserting a new sub-paragraph into the vigilance clearance guidelines of 14 December 2007.

Those 2007 guidelines confined vigilance clearance to four purposes: empanelment, any deputation for which clearance is necessary, appointment to a sensitive post, and assignment to a training programme other than mandatory training. The consolidated instruction of 28 September 2022 narrowed Part B further still, to three. The current instruction is much wider. Paragraph 7 of Part B of Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024 lists ten purposes, adding inclusion in the offer list, ex-India study leave, extension of a deputation, confirmation in service, retirement on voluntary retirement, post-retirement commercial employment, and premature voluntary repatriation from a deputation. Part A, which governs All India Services officers, lists eleven, adding inter-cadre transfer.

The 2024 memorandum carries no express supersession clause. It opens only by recording that “an effort has been made to revise the said guidelines for better understanding and guidance”, and it replaces the consolidated instruction of 28 September 2022 by occupying the same ground rather than by repealing it. That earlier instruction had stated the immovable property return ground in the older form, “latest by 31st January of the following year”.

Paragraph 8(k) of the same instruction carries the immovable property return ground. Its All India Services counterpart is paragraph 3(k) of Part A, worded identically except that it cites Rule 16 of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968. A default can also bite through a second route: paragraph 8(a) lists violation of the Conduct Rules as a circumstance in which a vigilance angle may be established, so a Rule 18 breach is capable of founding a vigilance angle in its own right.

Any write-up that describes the consequence of an immovable property return default as affecting “empanelment and deputation only” is describing the position as it stood between 2011 and 2022. Under the memorandum of 9 October 2024 the same default also stops confirmation in service, ex-India study leave, voluntary retirement and post-retirement commercial employment.

Disciplinary action and proportionality

Non-filing is a breach of a statutory rule and therefore misconduct, enforceable through the CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965 and, for an All India Services officer, through the AIS (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1969. Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023 states that failure to comply with the requirement “can form good and sufficient reasons for instituting disciplinary proceedings against him”, and directs that internal audit be used to check compliance. No rule prescribes a penalty for the breach, so the choice between the minor and major penalty routes is made under Rule 16 and Rule 14 of the CCS (CCA) Rules in the ordinary way, and a major penalty requires a full departmental inquiry on a charge sheet.

The clearest primary-source guidance on proportionality is on the All India Services side, in Department of Personnel and Training communication No. 11017/33/92-AIS(III) dated 7 July 1992. It sorts defaults into categories and then distinguishes between them. The serious categories are: withholding an acquisition initially and disclosing it only in a later return; not filing despite transactions having taken place; and failing to intimate or to seek permission while also not disclosing the source of acquisition. The categories capable of a lenient view are: returns not filed for years in which no property was acquired or disposed of; and cases where the transaction was duly reported, permission obtained and the funding fully explained, but the annual return itself was not filed. The instruction says that disciplinary action should invariably be taken in the case of a lapse, but that where the authorities are of the view that the lapses are minor and technical in nature, a lenient view can be taken depending on the circumstances of the case.

That distinction, between a paperwork omission and a concealment, decides most cases. A return not filed for a year in which nothing was bought or sold conceals nothing. A return filed on time that omits a flat bought that year conceals a great deal, and the same rule breach carries a very different weight in a proportionality assessment.

The pay matrix condition for All India Services officers

For All India Services officers a further consequence operates outside the vigilance system altogether. Notifications dated 30 December 2021 inserted Note 4 in Rule 3(1) of the IAS (Pay) Rules, 2016, and made the corresponding amendment to the IPS and Indian Forest Service pay rules, to make the timely submission of the immovable property return a condition for appointment to the next level in the pay matrix. Ministry of Home Affairs communication No. 45020/20/2021-IPS.II dated 11 December 2023 records the effect in those terms. Office Memorandum No. 11030/06/2021-AIS-II dated 27 June 2022 confirms the amendment and provides that missing returns from 1 January 2011 onwards “are to be filed during such timelines as would be prescribed by the GoI through separate instructions”. The same memorandum limits its own reach, recording that it “will not, in any way, affect the overall provisions regarding filing of IPR as contained in the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968”.

This is a pay-progression bar, not a vigilance denial, and it has no counterpart in the Central Civil Services.

Promotion and the reach of the default rule

Whether an immovable property return default blocks promotion in the Central Civil Services is unsettled, because two live Department of Personnel and Training instructions say opposite things and neither has been withdrawn.

The promotion-stage instruction excludes it. Vigilance clearance for promotion runs on a regime separate from the vigilance clearance of Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024, set out in Office Memorandum No. 22034/4/2012-Estt.(D) dated 2 November 2012 and consolidated at paragraph 8 of the Guidelines on Departmental Promotion Committees issued on 22 July 2024. That paragraph lists three categories of officer under a cloud: officers under suspension, officers who have been charge-sheeted with disciplinary proceedings pending, and officers against whom a criminal prosecution is pending. A property return default is not among them, and a departmental promotion committee applying paragraph 8 on its terms has no ground to seal a defaulter’s assessment. Clarification No. 102/03/2024-AVD-IA dated 6 February 2025 keeps the two regimes apart, directing ministries on the applicability of the 9 October 2024 guidelines to promotion proceedings. Paragraph 12.3 of the promotion guidelines does require fresh vigilance clearance before the promotion is actually made effective, or before confirmation.

The immovable property instruction includes it. The Department’s consolidated instruction of 23 December 2022 on the online filing of returns in the SPARROW module reproduces, as live content, Circular No. 11/7/2011-EO(PR) dated 4 April 2011: “It has been decided that officers who do not submit the property return in time would be denied Vigilance Clearance and will not be considered for promotion and empanelment for senior level posts in Government of India.” That is not a press summary or a historical footnote. It is a 2022 consolidation of a 2011 circular, published by the Department as current guidance.

The two cannot both be applied literally. The safe reading for an employee is the practical one: a default is capable of being raised against a promotion, whatever the departmental promotion committee guidelines list, and the cost of curing it is a single filing. The safe reading for a department is that the narrower and more recent promotion-specific instrument governs the committee’s own proceedings, and that paragraph 12.3 provides the later checkpoint at which a vigilance objection is properly taken.

The All India Services position, by contrast, is not in doubt. Notifications dated 30 December 2021 make timely filing a condition for appointment to the next level of the pay matrix, which is a genuine bar on progression. It rests on a different instrument from the vigilance regime and applies to a different set of officers, and merging the two is the commonest source of confusion in this area.

Three further consequences lie outside the rule and are worth stating for what they are not. A default does not itself attract a penalty, because no penalty is prescribed. It does not by itself justify suspension, which requires the grounds in Rule 10 of the CCS (CCA) Rules. And it has no automatic effect on pension or gratuity, though a pending disciplinary proceeding arising from it will hold up final sanction in the usual way.

Publication, secrecy and the right to information

Three positions coexist on whether a property return is a public document, and none of them has displaced the others.

The oldest instruction treats the return as confidential. Clause (d) of the Cabinet Secretariat order on file No. 25/7/65-Ests.(A) dated 6 January 1973 directs that “every such return shall be handled as secret document and the provisions of rule 11 of the Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, shall, as far as may be, apply thereto”. Rule 11 is the rule barring unauthorised communication of official information, so the direction does more than counsel discretion: it makes disclosure of a return a conduct breach in its own right.

Against that, Office Memorandum No. 11013/3/2011-Estt.A dated 11 April 2011 required the Group A returns for 2010 to be placed in the public domain by cadre controlling authorities by 31 May 2011, with a compliance report on the same date. The timetable then became annual. Paragraph 4 of Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023 records the current position, drawing on the order of 23 September 2013 bearing the 2011 file number: the returns to be submitted by 31 January each year “may be placed in public domain by 31 March of that year”. Paragraph 6 of the 2023 memorandum directs Ministries to ensure that this is done within the prescribed time and to use internal audit to check compliance.

The third position is judicial. In Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, (2013) 1 SCC 212, the Supreme Court held that the details of a public servant’s assets and liabilities, movable and immovable property, and income tax returns are personal information within Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, and are exempt from disclosure unless a larger public interest is shown.

The reconciliation is that Group A returns are published as a matter of executive policy, not because a citizen has a right of access to them. A request under the Right to Information Act, 2005 for the return of an individual officer is met by Deshpande; the publication of the same return on a departmental website happens because the Department of Personnel and Training has directed it, and it can be directed differently.

Section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013

The asset declaration promised by the Lokpal legislation has never been collected, and understanding why keeps a great deal of obsolete guidance out of the way.

As originally enacted, Section 44 of the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 required every public servant to declare assets and liabilities, including those of the spouse and dependent children, within 30 days of entering office, with an annual return by 31 July. The Public Servants (Furnishing of Information and Annual Return of Assets and Liabilities and the Limits for Exemption of Assets in Filing Returns) Rules, 2014 were notified as G.S.R. 501(E) on 14 July 2014 to carry it out, and were then amended at least six times in two years as the filing date was pushed back again and again through a chain of Department of Personnel and Training orders on file No. 407/12/2014-AVD-IV(B). The amending notifications were G.S.R. 638(E) of 8 September 2014, G.S.R. 918(E) of 26 December 2014, G.S.R. 322(E) of 27 April 2015, G.S.R. 536(E) of 3 July 2015 and G.S.R. 776(E) of 12 October 2015, the last styled the Third Amendment Rules, 2015, with a further amendment in 2016. The last extension, by Office Memorandum No. 407/16/2016-AVD-IV(LP) dated 29 July 2016, moved the first return and the annual returns as on 31 March 2015 and 31 March 2016 to 31 December 2016.

The Lokpal and Lokayuktas (Amendment) Act, 2016, Act No. 37 of 2016, received assent on 29 July 2016 and by section 1(2) “shall be deemed to have come into force on the 16th day of January, 2014”. Its section 2 substituted Section 44 with a single sentence: on and from the date of commencement of the Act, every public servant shall make a declaration of assets and liabilities in such form and manner as may be prescribed. Section 3 substituted clause (k) of section 59(2) with a matching rule-making power, and attached a proviso allowing those rules to be made retrospectively. The substitution removed the spouse and the dependent children, the 30-day timeline and the 31 July date from the section, and left the whole content to rules that had yet to be made.

Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 407/16/2016-AVD-IV(LP) dated 1 December 2016 drew the consequence. It recorded that the 2014 Rules and all the amendments made to them “have become redundant”, and then stated the position that still holds: “Thus, under the Public Servants (Furnishing of Information and Annual Return of Assets and Liabilities and the Limits for Exemption of Assets in Filing Returns) Rules, 2014 there is no requirement for filing of declarations of assets and liabilities by public servants now. The Government is in the process of finalising a fresh set of rules.” No replacement rules had been notified under the substituted Section 44 as at August 2026, and the memorandum of 1 December 2016 remains the Department’s last positive statement on the subject.

Two conclusions follow. Any source still publishing the Lokpal forms, the 31 July date, the requirement to declare within 30 days of entering office, or the publication timetable is describing repealed machinery. And the two filings were never merged. Office Memorandum No. 407/12/2014-AVD-IV(B) dated 13 January 2015, quoted in Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/3/2014-Estt.(A) dated 16 January 2015, put it directly: “the requirement of filing returns regarding assets and liabilities under the Lokpal Act is in addition to, and not in supersession of the requirement of filing similar returns under the existing Conduct Rules.” The same memorandum of 16 January 2015 recorded that “The Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, are being amended to align them with the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013”. That alignment never happened, which is why Rule 18 reads today exactly as it did before the Lokpal Act was passed. The Lokpal track lapsed. The Rule 18 track did not.

The return in a disproportionate assets case

Disproportionate assets is now an offence under Section 13(1)(b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The whole of sub-section (1) of Section 13 was substituted by the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, brought into force from 26 July 2018, a commencement date the Department of Personnel and Training records in Office Memorandum No. 372/6/2017-AVD-III dated 18 October 2024. The offence is now framed as intentional illicit enrichment during the period of office. Explanation 1 supplies the presumption: a person is presumed to have intentionally enriched himself illicitly if he, or any person on his behalf, is or has at any time during the period of office been in possession of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to his known sources of income which the public servant cannot satisfactorily account for. Section 13(2) prescribes imprisonment of not less than four years and up to ten years, and a fine.

One change in the 2018 substitution bears directly on the property return. The pre-2018 Explanation to Section 13(1)(e) defined “known sources of income” as income received from any lawful source and such receipt having been intimated in accordance with the provisions of any law, rules or orders applicable to a public servant. Explanation 2 as substituted defines the expression as income received from any lawful sources, and drops the intimation limb. The old argument, that income or an asset never intimated under Rule 18 could not count as a known source at all, no longer follows from the statutory text.

What the return still supplies is evidence, and a great deal of it. It is a signed, dated admission by the officer of what is owned, in whose name it is held, how it was acquired, from whom, and what income it produces, filed annually and retained by the prescribed authority. It fixes the asset position at the start and at the end of the check period on which the prosecution’s calculation rests. Any asset traced by the investigating agency but absent from the return moves the case from an accounting dispute about valuation to an allegation of concealment, which is a different argument with a different outcome.

The structure of Explanation 1 is what makes the return matter so much. The presumption arises once possession of disproportionate resources is shown, and the statutory words that follow, “which the public servant cannot satisfactorily account for”, put the officer to an explanation. The account the officer gives at that stage is measured against the account already given, year by year, in the property returns. An explanation offered for the first time after an investigation begins is worth less than the same explanation recorded in column 6 of a return filed five years earlier, and that difference in weight is the practical value of filing accurately rather than merely filing.

One frequently repeated proposition should be resisted. There is no percentage of disproportion below which the offence is not made out. Section 13 fixes no threshold, Explanation 1 fixes none, and Explanation 2 defines known sources of income without reference to any margin. A figure such as 10%, quoted as though it were a safe harbour, has no footing in the statutory text.

The link between the return and the prosecution is also the reason the Central Vigilance Commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation treat a Rule 18(4) order for a full statement of property and its source as an early step. It obtains the officer’s own account before an investigation formally begins, and it is the account against which everything found later is measured.

Related Articles

• CCS (Conduct) Rules, 1964
• CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965
• Vigilance clearance
• Disproportionate assets
• Prevention of Corruption Act
• Central Vigilance Commission
• Chief Vigilance Officer
• Central Bureau of Investigation
• Probity Portal
• Misconduct
• Departmental inquiry
• Charge sheet and articles of charge
• Major and minor penalty proceedings
• Suspension
• Penalty and proportionality
• Appeal, review and revision under the CCS (CCA) Rules
• Sealed cover procedure
• Central Administrative Tribunal
• Dismissal and removal from service
• Compulsory retirement
• Confirmation in service
• Probation in central government service
• Departmental Promotion Committee
• Annual Performance Appraisal Report
• Rotational transfer policy
• All India Services
• All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968
• Central Secretariat Service
• Deputation
• Empanelment
• Foreign service rules
• Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act
• Right to Information Act, 2005
• Department of Personnel and Training
• Article 309
• Article 311
• Head of office
• Basic pay
• Pay matrix
• Dearness allowance
• 7th Central Pay Commission
• Study leave
• Voluntary retirement
• Post-retirement commercial employment
• Central government pension
• Withholding of pension
• Central government employees in India

External references

• Department of Personnel and Training, blank immovable property return proforma: dopt.gov.in
• Department of Personnel and Training circulars, establishment and vigilance divisions: doptcirculars.nic.in
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 11012/11/2007-Estt.A dated 27 September 2011: documents.doptcirculars.nic.in
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 11013/2/88-Estt.(A) dated 7 July 1988 on time limits for grant of permission: documents.doptcirculars.nic.in
• All India Services rules compilation, Rule 16 of the AIS (Conduct) Rules, 1968: ips.gov.in
• Ministry of Home Affairs, online filing of immovable property returns by IPS officers: mha.gov.in
• Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Personnel, Lok Sabha answer of 18 July 2018 on property returns and vigilance clearance: pib.gov.in
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023 on the annual immovable property return: dopt.gov.in
• Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 407/16/2016-AVD-IV(LP) dated 1 December 2016 on the Lokpal asset declaration: dopt.gov.in
• Central Vigilance Commission: cvc.gov.in

References

1. Central Civil Services (Conduct) Rules, 1964, Rule 18 (movable, immovable and valuable property), Rule 18-A (transactions outside India), Rule 2(c) (members of family), and Explanations I and II to Rule 18, in the Department of Personnel and Training compilation as amended up to 31 December 2014.
2. Central Civil Services (Conduct) Amendment Rules, 2011, G.S.R. 370(E) dated 9 May 2011, substituting Rule 18(3) to replace the flat movable property threshold with two months’ basic pay; Notification No. 25/57/64-Ests(A) dated 5 January 1973, published as S.O. 83 dated 13 January 1973, inserting Rule 18-A and Explanation II; and G.S.R. 531(E) dated 29 July 2019, on file No. 11013/02/2019-Estt.A-III, which amended Rule 3 and left Rule 18 untouched.
3. Cabinet Secretariat, Department of Personnel, Order on file No. 25/7/65-Ests.(A) dated 6 January 1973, prescribing the forms and the timing of the return of assets and liabilities under Rule 18(1) and directing that every return be handled as a secret document.
4. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum No. 11013/2/88-Estt.(A) dated 7 July 1988, time limits for grant of permission under the Conduct Rules, in supersession of Office Memorandum No. 11013/17/77-Estt.(A) dated 19 April 1978.
5. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/2/2018-Estt.A-III dated 17 December 2018, prescribing Form I under Rule 18(2) and Form II under Rule 18(3) and superseding Office Memorandum No. 11013/9/89-Estt.(A) dated 27 November 1990 on repairs and minor construction.
6. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/7/2014-Estt.(A-III) dated 26 October 2015 and Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/7/2014-Estt.A-III dated 5 January 2016, extending the property return to Group C and erstwhile Group D in terms of Rule 18(4).
7. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum F. No. 11013/6/2018-Estt.A-III dated 7 February 2019, intimation where transactions in shares, securities, debentures and mutual fund schemes exceed six months’ basic pay in a calendar year, replacing Office Memorandum No. 11013/6/91-Estt.(A) dated 8 April 1992.
8. Department of Personnel and Training, Office Memorandum eF. No. 11013/17/2023-PP-A.III dated 14 July 2023, and D.O. No. 11013/17/2023-PP.A-III dated 30 December 2024, on timely submission of the annual immovable property return, the disciplinary consequence and placing Group A returns in the public domain by 31 March.
9. Department of Personnel and Training, Clarification No. 102/03/2024-AVD-IA dated 6 February 2025, on the applicability of the vigilance clearance guidelines to departmental promotion committees; Office Memorandum No. 104/33/2024-AVD-IA dated 9 October 2024, revised vigilance clearance guidelines, Part A paragraphs 2 and 3 and Part B paragraphs 7 and 8, replacing the consolidated instruction dated 28 September 2022; and the Guidelines on Departmental Promotion Committees dated 22 July 2024, paragraphs 8 and 12.3, drawing on Office Memorandum No. 22034/4/2012-Estt.(D) dated 2 November 2012.
10. All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968, Rule 16, Rule 16(5) and Rule 16-A, Rule 16(2) as substituted by Notification No. 11017/45/76-AIS(III) dated 11 January 1978 (G.S.R. No. 151 dated 28 January 1978) and as amended by Notification G.S.R. 363(E) dated 5 May 2011; with Instructions below Rule 16, namely Ministry of Home Affairs No. 8/9/60-AIS(III) dated 16 February 1960, U.O. No. 6/34/57-AIS(II) dated 7 May 1957, and Department of Personnel and Training communications No. 11017/33/92-AIS(III) dated 7 July 1992 and No. 11017/74/93-AIS(III) dated 4 January 1994.
11. Ministry of Home Affairs, communication No. 45020/20/2021-IPS.II dated 11 December 2023, mandatory online filing of the immovable property return by IPS officers; and Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 11030/06/2021-AIS-II dated 27 June 2022 on the pay matrix condition inserted by the notifications dated 30 December 2021.
12. Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 (Act 1 of 2014), Section 44 as substituted by the Lokpal and Lokayuktas (Amendment) Act, 2016 (Act 37 of 2016), assent 29 July 2016; the Public Servants (Furnishing of Information and Annual Return of Assets and Liabilities and the Limits for Exemption of Assets in Filing Returns) Rules, 2014, G.S.R. 501(E) dated 14 July 2014; and Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 407/16/2016-AVD-IV(LP) dated 1 December 2016.
13. Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, Section 13(1)(b) with Explanations 1 and 2 and Section 13(2), as substituted by the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, brought into force from 26 July 2018 as recorded in Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 372/6/2017-AVD-III dated 18 October 2024.
14. Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v. Central Information Commissioner, (2013) 1 SCC 212, on the exemption of a public servant’s asset and property details under Section 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.