The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) has issued a demand notice to IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal for ₹1.63 crore. Currently serving as a District Magistrate at Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, Nagpal has been accused of “unauthorised occupation” of an official Type VI-A bungalow on its Pusa campus in Delhi long after her deputation ended, between May 2022 and February 2025.
Who is IAS Durga Shakti Nagpal?
Durga Shakti Nagpal, a 2010-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, was allotted bungalow B-17 on March 19, 2015. At the time, she was an Officer on Special Duty to then Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh. She took possession of the bungalow a month later, while paying ₹6,600 per month plus water charges.
According to the filing, her deputation in the Agriculture Ministry ended in May 2019, but she continued living in the same house for years, even during her later postings in the Commerce Ministry and her return to her home cadre in 2021. She finally left the bungalow in February 2025, after IARI filed a complaint with the Delhi Police’s help to recover possession.
An alumna of Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women, Durga Shakti Nagpal holds a B.Tech in Computer Science. She joined the Indian Administrative Service in 2010 and gained attention for her work in both the state and central governments.
According to her LinkedIn profile, she started her IAS career as an Officer on Special Duty to the Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister, followed by a posting as Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce. Later, she returned to Uttar Pradesh as Special Secretary, Medical Education.
In April 2023, she became District Magistrate of Banda and is now posted as DM of Lakhimpur Kheri, where she continues to be in charge of major administrative and development initiatives.
IARI seeks damages from IAS Durga Shakti
Nagpal claims she had official permission to stay longer because of her parents’ sickness and has already cleared the rent for that period. “The extension was allowed, and I have paid the rent. Due to some missing paperwork, penal charges were added, which are purely notional. I’ve requested their waiver, and the process is underway,” she told The Indian Express.
She said her father’s bypass surgery and her mother’s knee replacements delayed her moving out, and that the Uttar Pradesh government had written to the Ministry in June 2025 supporting her plea for a waiver. “I had requested the Ministry for extension, which was allowed, and I have paid the rent for the same and subsequently vacated the house,” she said.
In a letter dated May 2 this year, IARI told her that her request for further extension “cannot be considered” and ordered her to pay ₹1.63 crore in “damage charges” for unauthorised occupation from May 2022 to February 2025.
For Type VI-A quarters, damages are calculated at fifty times the regular licence fee, about ₹92,000 for the first month, and then increase on a telescopic scale: ₹1.01 lakh the next month, ₹1.10 lakh the third, and rising to a maximum of ₹4.6 lakh per month after the eighth. Over three years, this added up to more than ₹1.63 crore.
The institute had been requesting her to vacate since 2020 and warned that once eviction proceedings kick in, it would be done under the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act. The institute claims that several reminders and show-cause notices were sent between 2020 and 2024. The actions were taken only after all these efforts failed. IARI went to the police in February 2025 and took possession at the end of that month.
Nagpal, meanwhile, claims that the penalty is “notional and impractical” and hopes it will be waived once the paperwork is corrected.