Chandigarh, October 11
It’s payback time for IAS officer SR Ladhar. He will have to shell out more than he pocketed as arbitration fee.

The Commissioner, Jalandhar division, was today asked by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to refund the amount collected by him as fee for arbitration work. He has also been asked to pay proportionate interest received by him in his bank account.

“It has been a unique endeavour of the respondent to aggrandise and enrich himself by this method,” the high court ruled.

The court also directed the state government to refund the amount so received from Ladhar to the farmers concerned. Before parting with the order, the Bench also imposed cost of Rs 20,000 on Ladhar for his conduct.

Taking up the PIL filed by advocate HC Arora, Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Augustine George Masih passed the orders after counsel for the Union of India Onkar Batalvi argued that IAS officers could not claim or fix fee for arbitration cases, without any sanction from the competent authority; and arbitration in land acquisition cases was a routine part of normal duty of such officers. The Bench asserted the officer was “not entitled to retain and claim any amount whatsoever”. “The respondent is a member of the IAS and is governed by the rules arising from the course of this employment. It is not his whim and fancy to generate income from other sources in the course of this employment, if the same is not permitted by the Central Government or the state government, depending on where he is posted.

“The respondent was posted at the relevant time with the state of Punjab. It is interesting to note that apart from him, no one else has claimed any fee whatsoever for performing duties of an arbitrator.”