Rewards to informers and officers - CBEC revises guidelines
CBEC has issued revised guidelines for grant of rewards to officers and informers. The salient features are:
1. Reward should not be granted as a matter of routine:- Reward is purely an ex-gratia payment which, subject to guidelines, may be granted based on the judgment of the authority competent to grant rewards and taking into account facts and circumstances of each case and cannot be claimed by anyone as a matter of right.
2. Informers and Government Servants will be eligible for reward upto 20% of the net sale-proceeds of the contraband goods seized and/or amount of duty/ Service Tax evaded plus amount of fine and penalty levied/imposed and recovered.
3. Officers up to the rank of Additional Commissioner are eligible for reward.
4. The maximum reward in a case is Rs. 2 lakhs for officers.
5. To ensure that the Government Servants do not exceed the ceiling of Rs. 20 Lakh of total reward during their career, all rewards sanctioned to the Government Servants should be entered in their Service Book, before the same are disbursed.
6. To ensure that reward is not given only to a small group of Government Servants, it is necessary to ensure that larger numbers of Government Servants are given an opportunity to work in the anti-smuggling and anti-evasion assignments.
7. There is reward for even tax recovery.
CBEC Circular No. 20/2015., Dated July 31, 2015