Patna, March 11: Bolstered by the asset details of the government employees in the public domain, the vigilance department is gearing up to expedite its preliminary inquiry into allegations of huge wealth amassed by some officers disproportionate to their known source of income.

“Preliminary inquiry is underway against a dozen officers of the All India Service and about two dozen officials of the state service,” a senior officer of the vigilance department said today.

He said the government had made their task easier by asking all the public servants to submit details of their property.

The officer said some vice-chancellors of the universities in Bihar were also under the scanner of the vigilance department for accumulating huge wealth through fraudulent means.

“Some complaints against the officers of the vigilance bureau have also been received and being probed into,” he added.

The investigations into disproportionate assets cases would expedite as the details of the property of the tainted officers have been uploaded on the official website.

“There is no need to question these officials right now. Everything has been made public by them and they cannot deny them,” the officer said, adding over two dozen officers of the state service and some posted with the state corporations were under the surveillance of the two anti-corruption wings of the state government.

The agony of the tainted officers does not end here.

If public servants concealed income and did not mention about any particular property in the declaration, the income tax department can net them.

Sources said once the preliminary inquiry is complete, the process of initiating criminal proceedings against corrupt officials would formally start.

An investigating officer, however, expressed his reservation over the common perception that online asset details of the government employees would ease their task of tightening noose around tainted officials.

He said: “I doubt the declaration of assets will serve the purpose of the vigilance department. A large number of government employees have not presented the real picture.”

According to sources in the general administration department, asset details of 190 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers, 169 Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, 29 Indian Forest Service (IFS) officers, 2,800 Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) officers and 350 Bihar Police Service officers have been uploaded. Ten days after majority of the 450,000 government officials, including IAS, IPS and BPSC officers in the state submitted their asset details to the state government as per an official directive, they were uploaded on the government’s official website late on Wednesday evening.

“As of now, details of the assets of nearly 80,000 government officials are available online,” Deepak Kumar, the principal secretary of the general administration department, said.

It would take almost a month to upload the asset details of all the public servants, he added.

As part of the state government’s anti-corruption drive, the vigilance department has served notice on 18 government officers for initiating confiscation of their property allegedly amassed disproportionate to their known sources of income.