IAS probationer Puja Khedkar faces termination, criminal charges if disability, caste claims untrue

NEW DELHI: Probationary IAS officer Puja Khedkar, in the eye of a storm over the authenticity of her disability and OBC status claims that got her appointed to the civil services, could face termination of service and even criminal charges of forgery if the one-man panel set by the Centre to probe the matter finds any misrepresentation or suppression of facts on her part.


Sources in the government said the panel of DoPT additional secretary Manoj Dwivedi will, over the next two weeks, probe how she obtained the documents establishing her disability and OBC status, and whether proper vetting was carried out by the issuing authority. Khedkar is said to have recurrently failed to appear for mandatory medical tests at AIIMS Delhi to confirm her disability, despite having qualified for IAS in the ‘Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD)’ category.

“The panel will submit its findings to DoPT which will then forward the report with recommendations to the Maharashtra government, since she is allocated to the Maharashtra cadre. If found guilty of forging her OBC and disability papers, the state government could terminate her. Also, she may face criminal liability for forgery and misrepresentation,” a source said.


The DoPT panel looking into Khedkar’s claims is likely to take the help of social justice ministry to verify her OBC status. Although she claims to be from the economically weaker category, the affidavit filed by her father, an ex-bureaucrat and a candidate in the recent Lok Sabha polls, declared his assets at over Rs 40 crore. Khedkar was shown as the owner of flats and plots worth crores.


The panel will, in consultation with experts from AIIMS Delhi, also examine if the visual and mental disability claimed by her meets the benchmarks for employment in the government.

A senior government functionary said this was not the first case of a civil services aspirant making incorrect disability claims for selection in the PwBD category. “There are instances almost every year when those selected on the basis of false disability claims have evaded the mandatory medical test at AIIMS Delhi and even escalated the matter to the Central Administrative Tribunal seeking testing elsewhere. Eventually, however, they could not secure an appointment after having failed the test,” the functionary told TOI.



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