Puja Khedkar was found at the centre of a controversy over her alleged misuse of power as a civil servant.
The details of what former IAS trainee officer Puja Khedkar – whose Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) candidature was recently cancelled amid a raging controversy – wrote in a letter to the Additional Chief Secretary of Maharashtra last month have emerged.
In the letter dated July 11, Khedkar tried to clarify her position and accused Pune Collector Suhas Diwase of “insulting” her since her first day of training at the Pune District Collectorate, reported The Indian Express.
According to the report, Khedkar, in the letter, mentioned that she was extremely disturbed after Diwase complained to the higher authorities about the former IAS trainee’s “entitled behaviour” and the subsequent media coverage regarding it.
“Because of this (letter and media coverage), my image has become that of an arrogant officer in the public’s eye. This is causing me mental trauma, and I am extremely disturbed…I don’t know the reason, but since the day I joined as a probationary officer, the Pune Collector has been subjecting me to insults,” Khedkar wrote in the three-page letter written in Marathi, reported The Indian Express.
The IAS trainee was also accused of removing the nameplate of a senior official at the Pune collector’s office when he allowed her to use his ante-chamber as her office.
Responding to this, Khedkar clarified that Additional Collector Ajay More had voluntarily offered the ante-chamber to her and had also directed his staff to set it up for her.
“The staff enquired about my needs and arranged the stationery, etc. After District Collector Diwase sir returned to the office a day later, someone informed him about my sitting arrangement in the ante-chamber of the additional collector. Perhaps he was angered by this, he summoned the tehsildar concerned and ordered to remove my furniture from the ante-chamber,” she wrote, as quoted by The Indian Express.