Three-fold rise in reward to informers, officers

In order to check gold smuggling, informers and government officers will be rewarded three times more for giving inputs leading to detection and seizure of the yellow metal being illegally brought into the country.
Besides, the Finance Ministry has also increased the ceiling on rewards given to an officer to Rs 20 lakh from Rs 15 lakh in the entire career for detection of frauds, evasion of indirect taxes and seizure of gold, fake Indian currency notes, arms and ammunitions, among others, besides recovery from tax defaulters.
For the first time, the officers of the level of Joint and Additional Commissioners will also be eligible for reward. Earlier, it was limited to officers upto the rank of Deputy Commissioners.

"Government servants will be eligible for sanction or payment of total reward not exceeding Rs 20 lakh during their entire career," as per the new 'guidelines for grant of reward to informers and government servants, 2015' issued by the Ministry. Earlier, the limit was Rs 15 lakh.
As regards a single case, an individual officer should not be sanctioned a total reward (advance reward and final reward put together) exceeding Rs two lakh, it said.
However, in exceptional cases, reward in excess of Rs two lakh can be sanctioned to an individual officer by Central Board of Excise and Customs on the recommendation of the sanctioning authority for which proposals may be sent to the Finance Ministry through Directorate General of Revenue Intelligence and Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence, as the case may be, the guidelines said.

The ceiling of reward to private persons engaged in office for help in work related to intelligence or investigation and post-investigation taks, earlier fixed at Rs 1,000, shall now be Rs 2,500 in each case, it said.