Railways, public sector banks and the revenue department had the ignominy of having the most number of corrupt officials, as the Prime Minister?s Office revealed on Wednesday a list of government employees caught by the CBI for taking bribes. As per data presented in Parliament by the minister of state in the PMO

V Narayanasamy, between 2008 and now, 955 central government officials have been caught taking bribes.

Railways has been the most corrupt department with 156 officials in the net, followed by banks (144), department of revenue (92) and Customs and Central Excise (70). The overall figures showed a declining trend in corruption among bureaucrats with the total number of bribe-takers decreasing from 305 in 2008 to 292 in 2009 and further to 227 in 2010. The number is 131 so far this year. However, individually, certain departments ? for instance, the ministry of coal ? have become more corrupt.

The data presented by the government looked fallible as it virtually gave a clean chit to a few departments, which are seen to be as prone to corruption as others. For instance, the ministry of health was surprisingly clean on the government’s corruption index, with just one official caught taking bribe since 2008. The power and textiles ministries were also less corrupt with just two bribe-takers each. The SME ministry was another with a rather clean track record with just four officials caught taking bribes. The data do not seem to fully capture the extent of corruption as also CBI?s lethargy. Thisis evident in the sharp decline in bribe-takers at the Customs and Central Excise only in 2009. Similar incidences were reported from the department in all the other years.

The DoT, in the eye of a storm with the former minister A Raja behind bars for spectrum allocation scam was ranked fifth in the list, with 40 officials caught red-handed since 2008. Commenting on the data, former vigilance commissioner Sudhir Kumar told FE: ?It indicates that we have not been able to deal with such cases firmly and develop a credible mechanism to curb the menace.”

The incidence of corruption among government officials has become a focal point in the country, with social activist Anna Hazare performing fast unto death for a stronger law to fight corruption, which is giving sleepless nights to the government.

Transparency International ranked India at 87 out of 178 countries in the corruption index last year for the government sector. For the private sector, India’s rank was 19 among 22 countries. A KPMG survey puts telecommunications, under limelight in the recent months due to the 2G scam, as the second-most corruption-prone sector in India after real estate and construction. Industry body CII has said that the issue of corruption has been high on the agenda of government, industry and the civil society.