Mumbai: With a change in guard and Devendra Fadnavis at the helm, the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s Office on the sixth floor of Mantralaya, the state secretariat, in Mumbai has seen the return of several faces that used to frequent the corridors between 2014 and 2019, when Fadnavis first held the position.
However, one name that was not present in the secretariat back then is now among the most significant in the state’s bureaucracy—that of Indian Administrative Service officer Shrikar Pardeshi.
In one of his first moves after taking oath as the chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis last week issued orders to bring Pardeshi, a 2001 batch officer, on board as secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office.
Pardeshi was previously part of the Deputy Chief Minister’s Office, when Fadnavis held that profile, and has over the past two years grown to be the six-time Nagpur MLA’s right-hand man in the state’s administration. If any official of any department wanted to get Fadnavis to see a file, give his perspective or sign off on something, Pardeshi was the first point of contact.
“While Fadnavis himself is very accessible, Pardeshi would take care of the bulk of the coordination between the government departments and the Deputy CM’s Office,” a senior IAS officer, who did not wish to be named, said. “He is good to work with, very efficient. And despite his position in Fadnavis’s office, he is very courteous and polite with other officers, which ensures there’s no friction.”
As an IAS officer, Pardeshi has worked on sorting land records, taken harsh action against illegal construction, earning the title of “demolition man” at one point, focused on digitisation and ease of doing business, and helped drive some of the Centre’s flagship schemes.
In a sense, the focal points of his 23-year career almost mirror the stated priorities of Fadnavis during his first term as chief minister. Even this time, in a meeting with senior civil servants Monday, CM Fadnavis gave directions to improve grievance redressal for citizens, bring in transparency by improving department websites and bring in an “ease of living”.
Speaking to ThePrint Tuesday, Pardeshi said, “CM sir’s entire goal is transparency, development and speed. These are things that even I enjoy working on.”
He added, “It is a very comfortable working relationship. Sir (Fadnavis) guides officers well. Whenever there’s any question, we just have to send him a message and we get a response even if he is travelling. That expedites decision making, and once there is clarity of thought at the top, the rest falls in place.”
From PMO to CMO
In some ways, the roots of Pardeshi’s new stint in the Maharashtra CMO lie in his tenure in the Prime Minister’s Office from 2015 to 2020. This was when Fadnavis closely observed Pardeshi’s work while coordinating for projects with the Union government as Maharashtra chief minister.
Fadnavis was CM till October 2019, when the assembly elections were held in Maharashtra, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could not form the government, despite emerging as the single-largest party.
For the first three years of his five-year stint in the PMO, Pardeshi worked as director handling various social sectors, such as health, rural development, water and sanitation, housing, tribal affairs, women and child development, and so on.
“It was a good opportunity to see the vision of the prime minister and the way the Union government functions. I was focusing on the programme monitoring and implementation of flagship programmes. We used to be part of the team for the policy formulation of new programmes, too,” Pardeshi told ThePrint.
Later, Pardeshi was promoted as joint secretary and was more involved in the work on important policies.
Within the PMO, monitoring and coordination duties for different states had been divided among various officials, and Pardeshi was in charge of Maharashtra and Karnataka. This is how he came to directly work with Fadnavis and when the Bharatiya Janata Party leader took charge as deputy chief minister in 2022, he brought Pardeshi into his team.
At the time, Pardeshi, who holds the laurel of standing first in Maharashtra and tenth in the country in the civil services exam, had also just returned to Maharashtra after two academic stints—one at the Harvard Kennedy School for a masters degree in public administration and the other at John Hopkins University for a masters in public health.
Back in the Maharashtra cadre, Pardeshi was heading SICOM Limited, a Maharashtra government-led public financial institution.
As secretary in the Deputy Chief Minister’s Office, Pardeshi looked at almost all important policy proposals and cabinet notes of different departments that would be marked to Fadnavis. But, largely, he worked on departments directly headed by Fadnavis—home, energy and irrigation. This list also included the plum portfolios of housing and finance before the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) joined the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government.
‘Demolition man’
Pardeshi’s most dashing and the most controversial stint was as the municipal commissioner of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) that spanned less than two years.
His transfer in 2014 had turned into a raging political controversy with parties like BJP, Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) as well as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) staging protests against the move of the then Congress-NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) government. Pardeshi had been transferred as Inspector General of Registration and Controller of Stamps.
As PCMC commissioner, Pardeshi had ruffled the feathers of some public representatives by taking stringent action against illegal construction, especially near the two rivers, Mula and Pawna, that flow through the area.
Social activists, such as Anna Hazare, had also objected to Pardeshi’s transfer. One civic activist had lodged a complaint with the state information commissioner, demanding that the then Prithviraj Chavan-led state government explain the reasons for the transfer, while another filed a public interest litigation in the Bombay High Court.
The PCMC was, at that time, ruled by the undivided NCP and there were allegations that Pardeshi was transferred due to pressure mounted by the party, particularly Ajit Pawar, within the state government.
Responding to the allegations, Pawar, who was deputy chief minister back then, too, told reporters that he had no role to play in the matter and that it was done at the behest of then chief minister, Chavan.
“The CM thought that instead of having such a capable officer as the head of one municipal corporation, he should be brought into the mainstay state government. The discussion was that if he is put as the Inspector General of Stamps and Registration, we will be able to increase the revenue through that source, and ultimately, it will help the state’s development projects,” Pawar had said then.
According to a leader from the Pune district from Ajit Pawar’s NCP, Pardeshi was one of the hard-boiled officers who paid no heed to what corporators used to say. “He used to simply follow the rule book and act. He never considered any requests of public representatives. For corporators, it becomes difficult to get people’s work done. It’s difficult to work with such inflexible officers,” he told ThePrint.
With the Ajit Pawar-led NCP being a part of the government since 2023, MLAs and party leaders have had to interact with Pardeshi at times. However, the friction has not been as severe. “As secretary in Fadnavis’s office, Pardeshi has had to only take directions from him and do his work,” the NCP leader said.
For Pardeshi, the controversial transfer in 2014 is a closed chapter. “We were simply following the law out of concern for the safety of citizens. There were differences of opinion. I don’t want to comment on it,” he said.
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Digital push
Pardeshi, who hails from Kavathe Mahankal village in the Sangli district, grew up seeing his father work in the state’s public works department. He spent a large part of his life in Pune, studying to be a doctor, working in the city’s Sassoon Hospital, and later studying for an MD in public health.
Pardeshi’s first posting as an IAS officer was in Kolhapur’s Radhanagari as assistant collector, where he had to work on a lot of issues related to land records and public disputes, he recalled. As a civil servant, Pardeshi was among the first to harness the advantages of digitisation for public administration.
During his tenure as PCMC commissioner, Pardeshi launched a portal called Sarathi (System of Assisting Residents and Tourists Through Helpline Information) as an integrated platform to register citizens’ complaints and suggestions, much before other civic bodies hopped on to the digital bandwagon.
Using Sarathi, PCMC residents could lodge complaints on several issues, such as dysfunctional streetlights, broken drains, problems with garbage pick-up, and so on. The complaints would be directed at the relevant ward officer, who would then act on them.
The platform was launched in 2013, and a few years later, the Union Ministry of Urban Development urged other civic bodies to develop a PCMC-type Sarathi portal. Officials who have worked with Pardeshi in the PCMC say that the officer simplified many processes by cutting down unnecessary steps and approvals.
In the stamps and registrations department too, Pardeshi took to digitisation and started a call centre to help citizens with basic services, such as paying stamp duty, the process of registration, getting a refund for excess stamp duty, process for marriage registration, and so on.
At the CMO now, there is still not much clarity on what Pardeshi’s exact role would be. “The government has just taken over and our office is settling down. The division of responsibilities at the secretariat level is under process. Whatever responsibilities he gives me, I will work to the best of my abilities,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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