Hindustan
Times: Chandigarh: Friday, May 22, 2015.
The Punjab and Haryana high court has sought
Punjab chief secretary Sarvesh Kaushal's response to a contempt petition
alleging that the arbitration fee collected by IAS (Indian Administrative
Service) officer SR Ladhar from land owners in the state had not been paid
back.
The high court bench of justice RK Jain has also
issued notices to the Jalandhar divisional commissioner and Ladhar to ask for
their response by September 4.
In October 2013, it had issued directions to the state in this regard. The conduct of
Ladhar, a 1991-batch IAS officer, had come under scrutiny after a series of reports in HT,
starting with 'IAS officer reaps a rich harvest' and 'No policy, Ladhar makes
hay as arbitrator' (May 24 and 25, 2012). In October 2012, on the basis of these reports, a public-interest petition was filed in
the high court for the recovery of the entire amount from the officer who is
said to be close to key leaders of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
The petitioner, HC Arora, had asked for the
exercise to be over in a month; but the court was told that in spite of
directions from the state government to the arbitrators, including Ladhar, to
supply the details of the arbitration cases, the latter had not supplied the
list. The petitioner submitted that Ladhar had written to the government in
March 2014 that he had paid `57.17 lakh of the collected money as income tax, and it was to be remitted to
the government as and when the refund was received.
So far, of the 2,313 entries of arbitration-fee
deposit in banks, 676
for an aggregate amount of `1.46 crore could not be matched
with the office records in the absence of information from Ladhar, the
petitioner had submitted, referring to the information he had from various
government agencies under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.