Reminds Them Of Penalty Under ‘Criminal Misconduct’ For Non-Submission Of APRs
Srinagar, Dec 22 : Government on Wednesday asked its employees to register themselves on the PRS Portal and file their annual property returns for the year 2021 necessarily.
“Sub Section 2 of Section 9 of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Men and Public Servants Declaration of Assets and other Provisions Act, 1983 lays down that it shall be incumbent on the part of every public servant to submit annual returns of the assets held by him and his family members in the month of January every year and shall indicate the reasons for increase, if any, in the assets and source thereof,” reads an order by government.
The Jammu & Kashmir Public Servants Declaration of Assets Act and Rules provides for imposing a penalty for non-submission of the property returns by public servants.
“It is further provided that if any public servant without any reasonable cause which he shall be required to show, fails to submit the return annually, he shall be guilty of committing criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act and shall be punishable under the said Act,” the order, a copy of which lies with GNS, reads further.
“The Act and Rules also lay down that every Public servant shall submit annual property returns in duplicate to the General Administration Department (Vigilance) in respect of all the assets possessed by the public servant and his family members,” it said, adding, “This manual mode of filing the annual property returns was seen as a cumbersome exercise and in order to make it easy and accessible, it was felt that property returns should be filed through online mode and the process for submission should be made user friendly.”
With a view to make the process of filing of property returns employee friendly, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir has recently launched online portal for filing of annual property returns (PRS Portal), it reads further.
“The facility for filing the annual property returns by all public servants shall be available on https://prs.jk.gov.in. The public servants can file their annual property returns on the portal from 1st of January and the facility will get automatically closed on 31st of January every year,” it said, adding, “For submitting the details on the portal, every employee has to first register himself on the portal through his CPIS account. In case of employees with no CPIS number, their respective DDOs will get them registered on the portal.”
The portal will facilitate processing of vigilance clearance in favour of the employees and non-submission of the property returns will result in denial of their vigilance clearance, it said.
“Accordingly, all the employees are instructed to register themselves on the PRS Portal and subsequently file their annual property returns for the year 2021 necessarily,” it said, adding, “The employees will be able to submit their property details on the portal from 1st of January, 2022 upto 31st of January, 2022. Further, it is enjoined upon all the DDOs to ensure the registration/subsequent filing of the property details of their employees within the specified timelines.” (GNS)
