How Puja Khedkar Cheated the System with Fake Reservations to VIP Demands? The IAS Trainee’s Unusual Abuse of Power and Privilege!

Puja Khedkar has 7 properties in Ahmednagar and Pune, totaling 17 crores. Her annual income from these properties is Rs. 48 lakhs. And the same DOPT gave her an OBC-non-creamy-layer reservation. What’s going on in the country?

Every year, around 10 lakh candidates take the UPSC exam with a dream that one day, they’ll work as the district collector, health secretary, or in the prime minister’s office to serve the country. Movies are being made to motivate them. Don’t give up. Restart. Restart. And if one day, aspirants find out that the race they are running with lakhs of students for just a few seats was fixed from the start, what will they do?

Aspirants are being told to restart. But someone else has reached the finish line with cheating. Puja Khedkar, an IAS trainee, was completing her training in Pune. But her behaviour wasn’t like that of a government official, but like that of a queen. She asked for many special privileges. Like asking for a VIP light, VIP number plate, and Maharashtra government board for her private Audi car. “IAS Puja even asked for a separate chamber, car, residence and constables.” 

Her actions have shaken the entire government. The government has created a panel to investigate this. The prime minister’s office has asked for a report on her Case. “After which the central government has formed a committee to investigate the allegation of forgery of documents.” 

But this case is so shocking that some details are difficult to believe. People may think this person hangs the system. But she, who isn’t hanging the system, is slapping it.

The Details of the Case

Regarding systems, India needs significant reforms at the IAS or IPS level and in undergraduate education. There is a tehsil in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, Pathardi. There lives a family with many politicians and bureaucrats. This is Pooja’s family. Her father, Dilip Rao Khedkar, is a retired IAS officer who used to work for the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board.

He is also a politician. He fought the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections with the Panchit Bahujan Agadi Party and won 15,000 votes. Pooja’s mother heads the Bhalgaon village of Pathardi tehsil, where this family comes from. She was recently seen in an old video going viral on social media. She was seen threatening a farmer with a gun. Some villagers said that this family is trying to capture farmers’ land.

Her mother, Manorma Khedkar, was threatening a farmer with her security guards. Pooja’s grandfather was a senior bureaucrat in our government. Puja Khedkar did her MBBS from Pune. She said she worked as an endocrinologist at the Gangaram Hospital in Delhi. These are the doctors who know about hormones.

She took UPSC exams several times. In 2019, she was admitted to the Indian Revenue Service, IRS.

“I was supposed to be allocated to the IRS, but my allocation is pending.”

“Is it on account of some legal issues?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was that?”

“Sir, some technical issue in the OBC allocation,” she said.

In November 2021, she applied for the job of Assistant Director at the Sports Authority of India. And she got the job. This year, she retook the UPSC exams. And she got the rank of IRS. She applied under two reservation categories.

• The first one is OBC.
• And the second one is PWBD(Persons with Benchmark Disability Category)

She got the highest category reservation in the Disabilities category, Level 5. Level 5 is for people with multiple disabilities. Puja Khedkar Told UPSC that she has two disabilities.

• One is that she’s visually impaired.
• And the other one is that she has a mental illness.

And now the controversy Started

On April 22, 2022, after clearing the UPSC exam, AIIMS Hospital in New Delhi called Puja Khedkar For a medical examination so that they could verify her disabilities. AIIMS Hospital’s duty officer called her 6 times. But Puja refused every time. She explained that she had COVID. She also explained why she couldn’t get an MRI scan.

Puja had to get an MRI scan in AIIMS to verify if there was any vision loss in her eyes. But Puja Khedkar refused to do this. The government department responsible for recruiting IAS officers is the Department of Personnel and Training, DOPT. 

On September 22, 2022, AIIMS wrote a letter to DOPT saying that the candidate was not cooperating with them for the medical examination. On November 14, 2022, AIIMS wrote another letter to DOPT saying that Pooja Khedkar Shouldn’t be given a candidature. 

Puja Khedkar took her Case to the Central Administrative Tribunal, CAT. This government body settles disputes regarding the recruitment of government officials. Advocate Vaibhav Kulkarni told CAT that her client Puja has a mental illness, claustrophobia, due to which she can’t get an MRI scan.  

Claustrophobia is a fear of closed space. In his arguments, Vaibhav said not to get an MRI scan but to get a medical examination done differently. But CAT refused to do this. Puja went to the Bombay High Court with her Case. The Bombay High Court ruled in Puja’s favour. They said to stop the investigation of CAT. AIIMS New Delhi was asked to get a medical examination done differently. No further information is available on this, and what happened after that is unknown.

The lawyer said that Puja Khedkar had told him that her medical examination had been done and that she had gotten clearance. The latest news outlet noted that Puja had her MRI scan done at a private medical facility and submitted it. AIIMS New Delhi didn’t do it. But this matter went under. 

Puja Khedkar started her training

She became an assistant collector at the district collector in Pune. An RTI activist who was investigating her posed many questions about her posting. She got a posting in the Bhandara district. 

How did she get an opportunity to train in Pune? 

To become an IAS, a candidate who cleared the UPSC exams has to pass a 2-year probation period. This is their training period. After training, they have to pass an exam. If they pass the exam, they become a permanent IAS officer. If a trainee fails the exam during this probation period or doesn’t follow the rules, their probation is cancelled. This means they won’t get a job.

Puja Khedkar had to start training in Pune on June 3, 2024. But the problems started early. Pune’s district collector, Suhas Diwase, submitted a 25-page report to Nitin Gadre, Maharashtra’s Additional Chief Secretary. He said that many of her demands started before her posting. But Puja’s demands started earlier, which the district collector didn’t know about.

In October 2023, Puja Khedkar called the Deputy Commissioner of Police Vivek Bansare of Navi Mumbai. She said he should let the man caught stealing steel go. Despite this pressure, Navi Mumbai police didn’t listen to Puja. And that man is still in jail. It is not known why Puja Khedkar made these demands. But before becoming an IAS officer, she pressured the police. But Pune’s district collector, Suhas Diwase, was right to say that Puja Khedkar made many demands before her joining date.

Several chats leaked about Puja Khedkar asking the Pune collector’s office for a cabin and accommodation on May 23, 10 days before her joining date. When she didn’t get a reply the next day, she said, kindly respond. It is important. When an official replied, this will be done, madam, she replied, this should be done before my arrival, not after my arrival.  

In his letter, the Pune district collector wrote that when the additional collector went to Mumbai for four days, Puja Khedkar took his chamber. She demanded furniture and a letterhead. She also placed a board of her name outside the chamber. On the same day, Puja’s father called the tehsildar. He threatened him; you’re troubling my daughter, who is a woman officer. You’ll have to face a lot of consequences. 

Interestingly, Puja Khedkar said in a mock interview that her income is zero because her parents are separated. She has no contact with her father. However, the district collector wrote in his letter that her father came to the district office on May 12 and 13 to work alongside her. Her father, Dilip Khedkar, also told the officials they must offer Puja Khedkar an office equipped with an attached restroom. And he also scolded them for why the office was not ready before Pooja’s arrival.

Then Puja’s father, Dilip Khedkar, told the officials 

 they have to change the electrical fittings in the office and can’t go home until the work is done. After that, Puja Khedkar applied for a beacon, a VIP number plate and a Maharashtra Government Board for her private Audi A4 car. The district collector said that he has received many probationary officers for training. But no one has ever demanded such facilities.

The probation officers don’t even get such facilities. This thing got media attention after the district collector wrote the letter. After the controversy, the Maharashtra government transferred her to the Washim district. She came there in a normal Bolero, not her private Audi car. When the media surrounded her, she said she couldn’t discuss the investigation as a government official. “As I told you, I’m not authorised to say anything to the media. I’ll make submissions as per the committee’s demand”, she said. 

She told the media that she’s excited to join the Washim district. She told the media that she’s excited to join the Washim district. But she didn’t join her duty on time. On the third day of her duty, the district collector of Vashim, Buveneswari S., said she had received the government’s order, but Puja Khedkar hadn’t joined her duty. She has not tried to contact me or any other official. But Puja’s story has many twists.

One of them is how she got the OBC reservation

In 1990, the government implemented several suggestions from the Mandal Commission, which gave the OBC community a 27% reservation in government institutes and jobs. But on some conditions. The condition was that a candidate’s parents couldn’t be government group A or Group B officers. And the annual income can’t be more than Rs. 8 lakh. These two categories are called creamy layers.

You may be from the OBC community, but if you’re privileged, there’s no reservation for you. The reservation is for the non-creamy layer. RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar said that her father’s election affidavit included a property worth Rs. 40 crores and an annual income of Rs. 43 lakh. He also owns agricultural land of 110 acres, seven properties, 900 grams of gold, diamonds and a gold watch worth Rs. 17 lakh.

But she got a reservation under the non-creamy layer OBC category.  The DOPT, which is investigating Puja, has a website that states that Puja Khedkar has 7 properties in Ahmednagar and Pune worth Rs. 17 crores. They generate an annual income of Rs. 48 lakh. 2 of them were gifted by her mother, and she bought 5. This DOPT gave them a non-creamy layer of OBC reservation.

What’s going on in the country?

The government has now set up a panel to investigate Puja’s Case. And they have even started an investigation against Puja’s father. But the story isn’t over yet. A few days ago, Pune’s traffic police notified Puja Khedkar that she used a beacon for her private Audi car. She also had 21 challans pending, worth Rs. 27000.

When the Pune police went to her house to give this notice, they found an Audi car and 4 other cars. But surprisingly, the next day, after a day of the notice, the Audi car disappeared from the house. This is Puja Khedkar’s story, who said in a mock interview that she has zero income.

Such news angers the citizens, especially aspiring candidates, because such people aren’t just misusing the system but ridiculing it. It must be considered that a politician can be in the system for five years, but an IAS officer can be in the system for 30 years. 

And now that Puja’s story is out, how many such cases are still there that nobody knows about?

In Kerala, in 2016, an IAS officer, Asif K. Yousuf, was charged with forging his income documents for the reservation under OBC-non-creamy-layer. 

Pooja Singhal, who was the youngest IAS officer in our country at the age of 21 and who was seen as the future of the country, was caught in a money laundering case by ED on May 11 2022″. Almost 19.5 crore cash was recovered.” It was also found that she had diverted 19 crore rupees from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. She’s still in custody.

Corruption in IAS offices is an open secret. An IAS officer said such things happen, but no one talks about it publicly out of fear or because they’re corrupt themselves. Former IAS officer and RBI Governor D. Subbarao said that 25% of IAS officers are corrupt, incompetent or inefficient. The problem is that it’s not easy to investigate IAS officers because you have to get permission from the government, and sometimes, the government refuses.

In April 2022, the CBI wanted to investigate several IAS officers caught in a PF scam of Rs. 2200 crore, but the UP government refused permission. A senior IAS officer said that IAS officers have such good connections that even if they’re accused of something, they use their connections to stop the investigation.

According to the government’s data, between 2016 and 2019, they received 2,500 corruption complaints about IAS officers and civil servants. And guess how many of those 2,500 have been convicted?

Two IAS officers.

That’s why a change needs to be made for the entire system. If the race is already fixed, there’s no point in asking candidates to restart.