Clerk’s assets swell 560% in 7 years, booked

Clerk’s assets swell 560% in 7 years, booked

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:11.01.2021

In what it sees as a clear indication of corruption at taluk offices, the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) has discovered that a record clerk in a tahsildar’s officer has had his wealth increase fivefold in seven years. He was booked for holding disproportionate assests earlier this week.

The DVAC said the accused, M Sivakumar, was working as a record clerk in the office of Shollinganallur taluk tahsildar. He was first recruited as a night watchman in the office of Tambaram tahsildar in July 2000 and elevated to the rank of record clerk nine years later.

The agency kept the check period for calculating the growth of his assets as January 2012 to January 2020, when the accused held the post of a record clerk in the election section of Greater Chennai Corporation. “This is the period when he accumulated maximum assets,” the agency said in a release.

As per calculations by the agency, assets in Sivakumar and his wife’s names in January 2012 were worth ₹20.4 lakh. By December 31, 2019, value of the assets the two held boomed to ₹1.3 crore.

Sivakumar’s legal income during the period was ₹18.2 lakh. The couple had incurred an expenditure of ₹6 lakh. Therefore, the assets acquired by the couple during the period were worth ₹1.1 crore. Likely savings was calculated as ₹12.2 lakh.

As per DVAC’s calculations, this means that assets were disproportionate to the tune of ₹1.02 crore, 561.2% times his income. The agency added that Sivakumar had purchased properties in his wife’s name as she had insufficient means to purchase them herself.

The DVAC booked a case against Sivakumar under section 13(1)(b) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

In the past few months, the agency has conducted several surprise checks at registration and taluk offices and uncovered thousands of rupees of bribe money and a network of agents at play.

From ₹20 lakh in Jan 2012, the value of assets held by record clerk Sivakumar and his wife soared to more than ₹1 crore by the end of 2019. DVAC calculated this to be a five-fold jump after taking into account his income, expenditure