Vivek Bhimanwar: The man in the muddle

Bhimanwar took the oath of office on February 18 and assumed charge on March 3 while the paper leak in the MPSC drugs inspector examination took place in mid-January 2026, said a source

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) chairperson Vivek Bhimanwar, who has been in the eye of a storm after the MPSC’s drug inspector exam paper leak and subsequent protests by students and opposition politicians, is considered an expert in state finance. He began his career in the erstwhile sales tax department as a Class I officer. A resident of Dharampeth in Nagpur, he did his BSc in physics and MSc in statistics and also has a law degree.

MPSC chairperson Vivek Bhimanwar

When Bhimanwar was working in the sales tax department, he was posted in Nagpur, and was chosen to join Devendra Fadnavis’s secretariat as his private secretary soon after Fadnavis became chief minister in 2014. In 2017, he was selected in the IAS in the non-state civil service category and then appointed as chief executive officer of the Thane zilla parishad.

He was later posted as the collector of Wardha, did a short stint in the information technology department and then worked as transport commissioner of the state from 2022 onwards. Bhimanwar was due to retire in February 2026, and his appointment as MPSC chairperson was announced two months before he retired. After the protests, Fadnavis wrote to governor Jishnu Dev Verma for a judicial probe into the functioning of Bhimanwar and his predecessors.

While Bhimanwar refused to speak to HT, a source close to him said that he took the oath of office on February 18 and assumed charge on March 3 while the paper leak in the MPSC drugs inspector examination took place in mid-January 2026.