Teachers’ council asks staff to declare income
The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has asked its employees to furnish details of their income and assets, which it will make public as part of its effort to bring transparency and curb corruption.
The council, which provides recognition to BEd/MEd colleges and teacher-training institutes, has often been accused of granting recognition to undeserving, even non-existent, institutes.
According to sources, the council has received several corruption allegations against its employees over the years and the recent move aims to address this concern.
“All the employees (including deputy secretary, under secretary and section officers) have been asked to provide details of their income, vehicles and properties with their current market price. Data for a period of three years has been sought and these will be compared with the (information available for) previous years,” a senior NCTE official said.
The NCTE official cited above said the employees are generally supposed to provide the income and assets details on their own but many do not submit the data despite several reminders.
“This time we have decided to put the information on our website so that it is in public domain,” the official said, adding any “suspicious” case will be put on the watch-list and monitored closely.
The issue of corruption in the NCTE has been raised in the Parliament, too. The then human resource development minister Smriti Irani had informed the Lok Sabha in 2015 that after reconstitution of the NCTE in May 2013, a vigilance wing was established under Chief Vigilance Officer to look into the cases against the officials of NCTE.
“The vigilance branch takes necessary measures in case of irregularities that come to its notice. In order to ensure transparency in the functioning of the NCTE, several steps have been initiated such as the online submission of applications for grant of recognition, online payment of fees and processing of applications in chronological order, among others,” the minister had said.