The government on Tuesday halted the ongoing district training of IAS probationer Puja Khedkar and directed her to report to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration by July 23.
Khedkar, 34, has been under fire for allegedly faking her disability and caste certificates to secure entry to the prestigious service, with top government sources indicating her likely termination.
Meanwhile, hours after her training as a probationary was cancelled, Puja Khedkar has registered a harassment case against the Pune Collector who ordered her transfer. Pune Collector Suhas Divase was the official who reported her alleged misuse of power to the Maharashtra government and subsequently, she was transferred to Washim.
This is the first punitive action against Khedkar who found herself in the eye of a storm after she hit headlines for seeking benefits she was not entitled to as assistant collector in Pune. She was reported to the Maharashtra chief secretary for her alleged improper conduct involving undue demands on the local administration.
Additional Chief Secretary of Maharashtra, Nitin Gadre, in a letter to Khedkar said, “The academy has decided to put your district training programme on hold and immediately recall you for further necessary action. You are hereby relieved from the district training programme of the state government of Maharashtra. You are instructed to join the academy at the earliest but not later than July 23, 2024 under any circumstances.”
The union government’s personnel ministry had on July 11 constituted a panel of Additional Secretary Manoj Dwivedi to look into the allegations of fraud against Khedkar. Sources said that Khedkar was staring at a likely termination on account of possible forgery of her disability and non-creamy OBC layer certificate which entitled her to compete for the 2022 Civil Services Exam under the persons with benchmark disabilities category.
She is learnt to have secured a low vision certificate in 2018 and mental depression and low vision certificate in 2021 from the Ahmednagar district hospital in Maharashtra. She qualified for IRS in 2022 and worked as assistant director at Sports Authority of India. She again took the civil services exam that year and got selected as IAS in the disability and OBC quota. She secured rank 821.
