UPSC Cancels Provisional Candidature Of Controversial IAS Trainee Puja Khedkar

The Commission said that after a detailed review of the available records, the UPSC has found Khedkar guilty of violating Central Services Examination (CSE) 2022 Rules.

The UPSC has alleged that Puja Khedkar not only changed her name, but also her parents’ name in the application, and that’s why the system couldn’t detect the malpractice.

“UPSC is in the process of further strengthening the SOP (standard operating procedure) to ensure that such a case does not recur in the future,” the Commission said.

Puja Khedkar, a trainee IAS officer posted in Pune, shot into the limelight earlier this month when a photo of her private car mounted with a red-blue beacon light went viral. This forced authorities to order her immediate transfer.

Several other allegations of wrongdoing then also came to the fore. These included the way she made it to the IAS by filing an affidavit in court claiming to be visually impaired and mentally ill and subsequently failing to appear four times for the court-scheduled medical examinations between July and September 2022.

In 2023, however, her affidavit was reportedly presented under the Rights of Disabilities Act, 2016 and consequently her appointment was given a go-ahead.

On these - Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD) certificates - which she submitted, the UPSC has clarified: “We do only a preliminary scrutiny of the certificates i.e. whether the certificate has been issued by the competent authority, the year to which the certificate pertains, issuing date of the certificate, whether there is any overwriting on the certificate, format of the certificate etc. Generally, the certificate is taken as genuine if it has been issued by the competent authority."

Also read: Beacon Light Atop Trainee IAS Officer's Private Car Underscores Misplaced Sense of Entitlement

The UPSC also said it has thoroughly examined the available data of more than 15,000 finally recommended candidates of the CSEs of the past 15 years, from 2009 to 2023, with respect to the number of attempts availed by them. 

"After this detailed exercise, barring the case of Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar, no other candidate has been found to have availed more number of attempts than permitted under the CSE Rules," the UPSC said.

The UPSC neither has the mandate nor the wherewithal to check the veracity of thousands of certificates submitted by the candidates every year, the Commission added.