Senior-most surviving member of Punjab cadre of IAS passes away-OxBig News Network

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 3

Prem Kathpalia, the senior-most surviving member of the Punjab cadre of the IAS, passed away here on Sunday. He was 94. His last rites were performed yesterday and a prayer meeting has been scheduled for 4.30 pm on March 6 at Chinmaya Mission.

A 1954-batch IAS officer, Kathpalia leaves behind fond memories. Remembering the late officer, former Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra said, “I am very sad at his passing away. He was Deputy Commissioner, Kangra, in the pre-reorganised Panjab when I got posted under him 64 years ago. A person of few words, unimpeachable integrity, serious inclination and a heart of gold, it was a great experience to work under his charge.”

Vohra, a 1959-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre, said Kathpalia was a learned student of English literature and a prominent tennis and cricket player.

“May the Lord rest the departed soul in eternal peace and give his dear wife and children the strength to bear this irreparable loss,” Vohra said.

Paying rich tributes, former Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court Justice (Retd) SS Sodhi said Kathpalia was known for his integrity, hard work and wisdom.

“He was a much respected civil servant. We knew each other socially in Chandigarh for years. We both served as members of the Board of Governors for Yadavindra Public School in Patiala,” said Justice Sodhi.

The last part of Kathpalia’s work life was spent in the Ministry of Home Affairs where he was involved in processes that led to the formation of Meghalaya state and Sikkim’s assimilation with India.

Kathpalia’s son Arun, speaking to The Tribune, described his father’s stint as the DC, Kangra, the largest district of joint Panjab, as the most memorable. “He later served in Patiala as Commissioner, first of the excise and taxation department and later of the division. In 1970-71, he drafted the Punjab excise policy that multiplied the state’s revenue manifold,” recalled Kathpalia’s elder son Kapil.

The family also mentioned Kathpalia’s voluntary leave after then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi clamped the Emergency in 1975.

After 1984, Prem Kathpalia went to Punjab, where he retired as Financial Commissioner, Revenue, but continued as senior adviser to then Punjab Governor due to President’s rule in the state.

“The militants were trying to damage the administration while efforts were on to conduct elections. It was decided to hoist the national flag at two locations. The Punjab Governor was to hoist the Tricolour at one place and my father at the other in Faridkot. A dynamite was detected at Faridkot stadium on the eve of Republic Day in 1991,” recalls Arun Kathpalia.

Prem Kathpalia’s father Rai Bahadur Harish Kathpalia had served as principal, Government College, Ludhiana.

Remembering his late friend, Amitabha Pande, retired Punjab-cadre IAS officer, said: “Prem Kathpalia was the senior-most surviving member of the Punjab cadre of the IAS. There was something about that generation of civil servants which made them vastly superior to those that followed. I remember Prem taking to learning Urdu really well after his retirement. These were large-hearted men who had an instinctive gift for wielding power with lightness and no trace of arrogance. Politicians both feared and admired them…. They took their role as the steel frame entrusted with safeguarding the Constitution as their primary duty and could go to any lengths and suffer any kind of victimisation without ever making a compromise. I was privileged to have worked under Prem Kathpalia in my very first posting as SDM when he was Divisional Commissioner, and although he was 16 years my senior, I could claim him as an equal peer and a personal friend.”