Who said corruption is rife in government offices? A workforce of 38.76 lakh (2001 census) central government employees has managed only 2,439 acts of corruption - over the last three years. At least, that is what the government would have us believe.

The minister for personnel, public grievances and pensions, Prithiviraj Chavan, apprised the Rajya Sabha of this exact number of CBI-registered cases against public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act on Wednesday.

Conviction figures are as exact but much lower, according to the minister's press note. The number of such cases registered in 2009 was 795 while only 230 cases received corruption.

The figures, of both cases registered and conviction, hardly show significant fluctuation. In 2007, the CBI registered 688 cases of which 238 got conviction while the number fell to 216 out of 744 cases registered in 2008. The first quarter of 2010 has seen the registration of 230 cases with convictions in 48. At this rate, the numbers at the end of the year would not greatly vary from the last three years'.

Editor's note - The government's efforts in fighting corruption are just as bad or as good as the statistics.

Disclaimer - Governance Now has narrowed down the ambit of public servants to 'regular, central government employees' while putting these data in a perspective. We haven't included the employees of various PSUs, government subsidiaries etc. who should have also, ideally, been considered in the listing of public servants.