Patna, March 2: At a time when corruption-related issues have taken centre stage in most parts of the country, Bihar is drawing attention for a diametrically opposite thing.

It pertains to the state government’s move to check corruption by introducing transparency about the asset details of its employees.

The assets details of around five lakh state government employees, ranging from the All India Services to th- ose belonging to Class III category, is being brought into public domain.

The move has drawn attention of some other state governments as well as that of the Centre.

“So far, we have received phone calls from three states, including Rajasthan, and officials who made these calls wanted to know about the preparations before undertaking this Herculean task,” a senior state government official, who preferred anonymity, told The Telegraph.

He said a senior central government official, too, had recently called up seeking details on the steps being taken for bringing the asset details of the employees into public domain.

“Though the Centre and the states from where we got calls did not make formal request seeking details, phone calls do indicate that the Bihar government’s move would be emulated by others sooner or later,” said the official, adding that after bringing the assets details of its employees into public domain, Bihar would become the first state in the country to take such a step.

The state government has been moving in a very methodical manner in doing the necessary homework for bringing the assets details of about five lakh employees into public domain.

The general administration department recently issued letters to all the departmental heads, director-general of police, divisional commissioners and district magistrates about the steps needed to be followed for uploading the assets details of employees on the official website.

The letter also talks about websites, which have to be used by different offici- als while uploading the assets details.

“We are also working out a system that would allow putting up links of all these websites on the official website of the state government so that interested persons could get the desired information by visiting just one website,” a general administration department official said.

Getting voted back to power in the 2010 Assembly elections with an unprecedented majority, chief minister Nitish Kumar has been very particular on the co- rruption issue in his seco- nd innings.

Time and again Nitish had harped upon introducing transparency was a major step to tame corruption. Before asking the state government employees to declare their assets details, Nitish set the example by making it compulsory for all the ministers to de- clare their assets every year by December 31.

The assets details of the chief minister and other ministers were uploaded on the government website in the first week of January this year.

Having set the example, government cracked the whip on its employees who had to declare their asset details latest by February 28.