Mumbai:
A day after the Bombay Excessive Court docket pulled up the state’s Meals and Drug Administration Commissioner over his conduct, his group turned as much as examine the Excessive Court docket’s personal canteen. It’s a small however telling episode within the profession of Tukaram Mundhe, a 2005-batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre, whose model of working has put the highlight on officers who tackle these in energy.
Since taking up as Commissioner of the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) three months in the past, Mundhe has put the state’s whole meals and beverage trade on edge. Pointing to breaches of hygiene requirements and threats to public well being, he has cancelled the licences of quite a few well-known eating places, ice cream parlours and dairies throughout Maharashtra. Nobody has been spared, from five-star lodges to government-run canteens.
When the Excessive Court docket criticised him for allegedly going past his powers whereas performing towards a lodge, his group responded by inspecting the Excessive Court docket canteen the next day.
Additionally Learn: ‘Chalta Hai‘ Attitude Won’t Be Tolerated: Tukaram Mundhe To NDTV
Mundhe is thought for being blunt and for hardly ever making exceptions. That method has come at a price: he has been transferred greater than 25 occasions over a twenty-year profession. Few bureaucrats in Maharashtra in current reminiscence have drawn this stage of consideration.
Mundhe’s model has drawn comparisons to a different officer who made headlines within the Nineteen Nineties for a lot the identical causes: Govind Ragho Khairnar.
Khairnar, too, was identified for taking up these in energy, and for going after unlawful development linked to underworld determine Dawood Ibrahim. That status earned him the nickname Mumbai’s “Bulldozer Man.”
From Clerk To “Bulldozer Man”
Khairnar joined the Maharashtra authorities as a clerk in 1964 and labored his method as much as develop into Deputy Commissioner of the Mumbai Municipal Company. As soon as within the function, he started focusing on unlawful hawkers and unauthorised constructions linked to influential politicians.
After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, Khairnar drew up a listing of unlawful buildings constructed by Dawood Ibrahim. He would flip up unannounced at these websites and have the buildings torn down.
One of many buildings on his record was “Mehjabeen” on Pakmodia Avenue, an elaborate property Dawood had in-built his spouse’s title. The constructing had glass partitions, a swimming pool, Italian marble flooring and each fashionable consolation, giving it the texture of a five-star lodge.
At some point, Khairnar arrived on the web site with a bulldozer and a group of BMC employees. The demolition took the entire day, and by the tip of it, Dawood’s “Sheesh Mahal” (palace of glass) had been decreased to rubble.
Khairnar went on to demolish one other luxurious property, this one belonging to Tiger Memon, an accused within the Mumbai blasts, within the Zaveri Bazaar space. It was the identical constructing from which Tiger had run his workplace whereas in India.
As Khairnar continued his marketing campaign towards the underworld, he confronted pushback. He was accused of focusing on the neighbourhoods of 1 specific neighborhood. In the course of the demolition of an unlawful bookstall on Mohammed Ali Highway, a duplicate of the Quran fell to the bottom, triggering controversy. Whereas that demolition was underway, Dawood’s affiliate, Salim Talwar, confronted him in an tried assault.
Politicians from the ruling get together of the time opposed Khairnar’s actions, after which Chief Minister Sharad Pawar moved to curb his powers. Khairnar continued regardless, and went on to make severe allegations towards Pawar. He was later suspended over costs of indiscipline and misconduct in direction of senior officers.
Throughout his suspension, Khairnar ran a public consciousness marketing campaign towards corruption, travelling throughout the state to deal with gatherings. At one such rally, he claimed to have truckloads of proof linking Sharad Pawar to Dawood Ibrahim, although he by no means produced this proof publicly.
The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance made use of the wave of allegations Khairnar had raised throughout the 1995 meeting elections. The injury performed to Sharad Pawar’s picture is taken into account to have contributed to the Congress get together’s defeat that yr, with the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance coming to energy for the primary time and Manohar Joshi turning into the brand new Chief Minister.
But no authorities, no matter which get together held workplace, appeared prepared to maintain such an officer in a outstanding place for lengthy. After the change of presidency in Maharashtra, when the query of lifting Khairnar’s suspension got here up, the identical Shiv Sena that had backed him throughout his marketing campaign towards Congress turned towards him. Sarcastically, it was the Congress that stood by Khairnar at that time.
