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How the Khedkar family saga unravelled a web of lies
The saga has consumed the entire Khedkar family, landed Puja Khedkar’s mother in jail, and pushing the Union Public Services Commission to start proceedings to cancel her candidature in the 2022 civil services exam with retrospective effect, a move that will end her career
On June 3, a day before Lok Sabha election results were to be announced, and the Pune district administration was busy preparing for the counting day, Puja Khedkar, probationary officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), drove into the parking lot of the Pune collectorate in her white Audi. Both, the swish car and the red beacon atop it raised eyebrows and brought her into sharp focus in Pune’s bureaucratic circles.
Just days before, the 2023 batch officer had sent text messages, thought by her seniors as peremptory, demanding that she be given a separate cabin, better furniture and her own staff. “When I was on probation, I was asked to work for the 1993 Latur earthquake relief work and I would travel by state transport bus and later by a Rajdoot bike donated to all staff by Escorts,” says a serving IAS officer to underscore the humble status of a probationer.
The Pune district collector Suhas Diwase was so offended by the tone of the text messages that he wrote to the additional chief secretary, General Administration Department, Nitin Gadre, detailing instances of Puja Khedkar’s alleged high-handedness.
And thus began a saga that has consumed the entire Khedkar family, landed her mother in jail, and pushing the Union Public Services Commission to start proceedings to cancel her candidature in the 2022 civil services exam with retrospective effect, a move that will end her career.
But when it started, L’affaire Khedkar just seemed like the story of a probationer who was getting too big for her boots.
“The relationship between a probationer and a collector is a second parent-child relationship, and is often a lifelong bond. The probationer shadows the collector for a year and learns the basics of the job from them,” says the recently-retired Maharashtra chief secretary Manoj Saunik. After the complaints, Khedkar was transferred to Washim on July 8 and where she has since filed a complaint against the Pune collector alleging that he tried to outrage her modesty when he invited her to lunch to his office.
People close to the Khedkar family say that the young probationer’s sense of entitlement could have come from her privileged upbringing. Her maternal grandfather Jagannath Balwant was in the IAS and served in Pune on two occasions. He was among the first from the Vanjari community to get into the civil services. He initiated the Maza Gaon, Mazi Shala (my village, my school) programme to promote rural education in Ahmednagar district. Khedkar’s mother Manorama who was arrested by Pune police on Thursday for brandishing a gun and threatening a few farmers after a video of her doing so emerged on social media, is a medical doctor. Khedkar herself studied medicine at Pune’s Kashibai Navale College before joining the civil services. Her father Dilip Khedkar, who started life as a sugarcane cutter from an impoverished family, retired as an officer from Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB), and this year contested the Lok Sabha elections from Ahmednagar on a Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) ticket.
The family moved from Bhalgaon Kasalwadi village in Ahmednagar district to Pune about 15 years ago and soon accumulated conspicuous wealth, acquiring multiple bungalows and plots of land in the city. Both of Khedkar’s parents nursed political ambitions. While her father built his ties with Prakash Ambedkar’s VBA, Manorama Khedkar became the sarpanch of Bhalgaon in 2019. “I was a member of gram panchayat when Tai (Manorama) was sarpanch. In her tenure she completed village development works like construction of new roads, construction of public toilets, resolving water issue and many other things,” said Popat Vilas Rokade who succeeded her as sarpanch earlier this year.
Rokade stressed that the Khedkar family is “good by nature,” and claimed that the video of Manorama Khedkar brandishing a weapon and threatening villagers was an old one. “If Tai were aggressive and domineering in nature, how could she have been elected as Lok Niyukt Sarpanch?” he asked, seemingly oblivious of the workings of politics.
Khedkar’s father’s family, too, has a longstanding association with local politics. Dilip Khedkar’s brother Manik was until recently the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party unit of Pathardi tehsil and is considered close to BJP MLA Monika Rajale and MLC Pankaja Munde. Their uncle Vitthal Dada Khedkar too served as village sarpanch and was twice elected as zila parishad member from Congress party.
A visit to the village reveals that politics has served the family profitably. The once poor sugarcane cutters now own close to 30 acres of farmland where they cultivate sugarcane, cotton, pomegranate and mangoes.
In the village, there is indignation over what’s perceived as a politically-motivated attack against Puja Khedkar. One of her uncles Shivaji Khedkar told HT: “Certain BJP leaders in Ahmednagar district are deliberately trying to frame our brother as he contested the election against them.” NCP (Sharad Pawar)’s Nilesh Lanke beat the BJP’s Sujay Vikhe Patil and the VBA candidate was widely seen as a “vote-cutter.”
The state BJP’s internecine politics has also muddied the waters for Khedkars as their proximity to Vanjari leader Pankaja Munde is well-known. Munde lost the Lok Sabha election from Beed. Photographs in the media of a ₹12 lakh cheque from ₹12 lakh cheque to a non-profit entity in the name of Gopinath Munde and which is chaired by Pankaja Munde have added grist to the rumour mills as has Dilip Khedkar’s offering of a silver crown to Mohta Devi in Pathardi to get an election ticket for Pankaja Munde (as it turns out she lost).
“A senior officer in Pune collectorate, close to a minister in Maharashtra cabinet from Ahmednagar worked against Puja and her father who contested Lok Sabha polls, denting the poll prospects of BJP leader from Ahmednagar,” says one of the Khedkar uncles.
But Puja Khedkar’s behaviour had a far more damaging (for herself and her family) fallout. Her candidature came under close scrutiny and when it emerged that Puja secured two disability certificates—for mental health and visual impairment—without going through the mandatory checks at AIIMS, Delhi which had summoned her at least six times, Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar, asked whether Khedkar’s ties with Munde had helped her beat the system. Pankaja Munde, recently nominated as MLC, denies helping the young probationer. She also denied receiving any cheques from Manorama Khedkar and professed no knowledge of the silver crown offered by Dilip Khedkar for her win. “I met some people at the Mohta devi temple, they asked me to perform pooja of a silver crown which I did without knowing they had offered the crown to the goddess for me,” she told HT.
Puja Khedkar applied for the civil services under the OBC quota in addition to the disability quota on the strength of the fact that her family’s income is below ₹8 lakh pa as is mandated by law. However, Dilip Khedkar in his affidavit to the election commission admitted that his family’s net worth was upwards of ₹40 crore.
But at Bhalgaon, none of these discrepancies matter. The villagers are convinced that Puja Khedkar is the victim of a powerful political family in Ahmednagar and collateral damage in the larger Maratha versus OBC battle playing out in the state. One of the village seniors, Uddhavrao Khedkar said, “Allegations about Dilip Khedkar’s family are politically motivated. All the villagers know who is behind these allegations. The Khedkar family have been strong advocates of no-reservation for Marathas under the OBC quota and now they are being targeted by powerful Marathas.”
