Khedkar may face termination, criminal prosecution

The central government-appointed committee led by IAS officer Manoj Dwivedi, looking into allegations against trainee civil servant Puja Khedkar, can recommend her termination and even criminal prosecution under charges of forgery, if allegations of her distorting her caste certificate prove to be true

New Delhi: The central government-appointed committee led by IAS officer Manoj Dwivedi, looking into allegations against trainee civil servant Puja Khedkar, can recommend her termination and even criminal prosecution under charges of forgery, if allegations of her distorting her caste certificate prove to be true. The committee which was set up on Thursday, will submit its findings in a fortnight. Dwivedi is an additional secretary in the department of personnel and training which is the nodal ministry for bureaucrats.

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The 32-year-old probationer secured her position in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) through the Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD) quota. The probe was set up as reports emerged of her owning property worth more than ₹22 crore, although she declared an annual income of ₹42 lakh in the financial disclosures submitted to the government before joining the service on January 28, 2023. There are doubts about the veracity of her disability claim as well, as she failed to appear before the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) despite six summons to verify her claims.

“Every year, there are UPSC candidates who try to use fake certificates to get in. We are able to successfully sift them out. We have to see if these reports are true and how this could have happened,” said a senior ministry official, who did not wish to be named. It is unclear if the probe report authored by Dwivedi, a 1997 batch Jammu and Kashmir cadre officer, will be made public. The ministry official said that the veracity of each candidate’s credential was checked by the UPSC and these processes may be reviewed soon too.