PATNA: Bihar's legislators will have to declare their assets annually as per a new norm. Only ministers and officials had to do so until now. 

Election Commission guidelines stipulate mandatory declaration of assets by candidates at the time of filing of nomination papers. But legislators will now have to furnish details of their assets every year, by December 31, to secretariats of the Vidhan Sabha and Vidhan Parishad, depending on the membership of their House. 

Assembly Speaker Udai Narain Choudhary and the Legislative Council chairman Tara Kant Jha have issued a directive asking members to furnish details of their property. The Speaker and Council Chairman too will be covered under the new norms. 

Chief minister Nitish Kumar had declared at the beginning of his second term that ministers including himself will have to mandatorily make public their assets annually. He soon enforced a similar prescription for officials, including IAS and IPS, though there was some initial resistance from a section of bureaucracy. 

But with the state government not willing to show any mercy and even declaring that it would withhold salaries of officials who would not comply with the directive, resenting officials eventually fell in line. 

"It was certainly a bold move which drew plaudits from different quarters. Assets and properties of officials are now in public domain as they have been put on websites. This never happened in the past, a big breakthrough as far as transparency is concerned," the principal secretary, General Administration Department Deepak Kumar told ET. 

All this vastly led to the image building of Nitish Kumar government.

TOI Patna