Mumbai: In January 2020, a little over a month after the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) came to power in Maharashtra, CM Uddhav Thackeray decided to post IAS officer Tukaram Mundhe as municipal commissioner of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
When Mundhe was called to the CM’s chamber to let him know about the new posting, the officer initially refused, worried that it might seem to be a political posting, a senior official posted in Mantralaya at the time said.
Nagpur is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stronghold and the home turf of Devendra Fadnavis. The Thackeray-led government came to to power by cobbling together an alliance despite the BJP being the single-largest party. Any posting made by this government in the BJP’s bastion had the potential to be seen through a political lens.
Mundhe, an IAS officer of the 2005 batch, however, eventually accepted the role, which unfolded exactly how he had feared.
Known for his no-nonsense attitude and by-the-book decisions, Mundhe has met with a lot of political resistance in his bureaucratic career, even as citizens have celebrated his work.
In his 20 years of service, Mundhe has been transferred 23 times. But, of all these, his posting as the Nagpur civic body chief has been the most politically contentious, one that continues to create problems for the bureaucrat even five years on.
On Tuesday, BJP MLA Krushna Khopde, who represents the Nagpur East assembly constituency, brought up Mundhe’s seven-month tenure as the Nagpur civic body chief in the winter session of the state legislative Assembly, levelling allegations of graft and irregularities against Mundhe.
“In seven months, the kind of things he did in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation. Despite not having any rights on the smart city corporation, he usurped the rights, issued a cheque of Rs 20 crore to a contractor. Our then mayor, Sandeep Joshi, and party leader Sandeep Jadhav had registered an FIR in the Sadar police station,” Khopde said.
“He also tortured and abused a woman who refused to sign on a file. Unfortunately, the then home minister was Anil Deshmukh, who tried to subvert the entire matter,” he added.
Deshmukh, the state home minister in 2020, was from the Sharad Pawar-led undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Khopde also alleged that when news leaked about his planning to raise the issue through a calling attention motion in the legislature, he got threat calls on both his mobile phones.
Pravin Datke, another BJP MLA who represents the Nagpur Central constituency, also backed Khopde, alleging that Mundhe cancelled the maternity leave of a woman who had delivered a baby just five days ago.
While Congress leaders have also clashed with Mundhe on several occasions in the past, in this case, Congress MLA Vijay Wadettiwar came to the bureaucrat’s defence in the Assembly. “There was an inquiry about his work in the corporation. He got a clean chit. There was a complaint in the National Women’s Commission, too, but the Commission penalised the woman who made the complaint,” he said. “All inquiries have pointed towards how Tukaram Mundhe is not guilty. If there is any truth to the allegations, then do conduct an inquiry, but if not, then an honest officer should not be troubled,” he added.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the Assembly, “There are two parts to this. One is that a sitting MLA received a threat, which is a very serious matter. We will come to the bottom of it, who were these people who issued threats, who do they work for. The other part is with regards to Tukaram Mundhe’s work. I will take all the necessary information about this and will give a detailed response in the House.”
Fadnavis had openly backed Mundhe back in 2017 when the IAS officer was battling similar political opposition. The ruling NCP, then undivided, tied up with the Opposition Shiv Sena (also undivided then) and the Congress to pass a resolution to oust Mundhe from the post of the Navi Mumbai civic body chief. Fadnavis suspended the resolution, saying Maharashtra needs such good officers.
Mundhe did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text message for a comment.
The officer, who grew up in Beed district’s Tadsonna village, joined the IAS in August 2005 as a supernumerary assistant collector at Solapur, one of his longest postings so far.
Most of his subsequent postings have lasted for a year or less, but Mundhe has ensured that he leaves a mark
He has been known for attempting to reduce teacher absenteeism at the grassroots, streamlining the use of development funds, introducing e-governance initiatives, tackling solid waste management issues in cities and acting on illegal approvals and construction with an iron hand.
The officer was also felicitated by CM Fadnavis as the ‘best collector’ for all-round performance in 2015-16, when Mundhe was in charge of the Solapur district, cracking down on the sand mafia, and making hundreds of villages and hamlets tanker-free in the water-scarce region.
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Contentious Nagpur stint
Soon after Mundhe took over the reins of the Nagpur civic body, he clashed with corporators across party lines on various issues such as the budget of the civic body, development work priorities, and even his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic which was seen as “dictatorial”.
Mundhe had refuted the charges by citing Nagpur’s better-than-average health indicators during the pandemic.
Things came to a head when the chief executive officer of the Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited resigned, after which BJP leaders in Nagpur started accusing Mundhe of usurping the post of the chief executive of the corporation. In various media statements then, Mundhe maintained that he had stepped in on the oral directions of Pravin Pardeshi, the then chairman of the corporation.
Pardeshi, a retired bureaucrat who is the chief economic adviser to the Maharashtra CM, did not respond to ThePrint’s call and text message for a comment.
The “Rs 20-crore” payment to a contractor Khopde alleged occurred during this period.
An official familiar with the issue said that the contractor was not newly appointed, and it was a running contract for which bills needed to be cleared.
Further, he said, after the issue flared up, the state public works department inspected the work and approved the payment.
Acting as the chief executive officer of the Nagpur Smart City Corporation, Mundhe reviewed numerous tenders and contracts.
For instance, he scrapped a plan for a transfer station in solid waste disposal and floated another proposal for biomining at the dumping ground instead.
During this period, a week after the then Nagpur Mayor Sandeep Joshi’s criminal complaint against Mundhe, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who hails from Nagpur, also wrote a complaint to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Union urban development ministry, alleging that Mundhe had “unlawfully and unconditionally” grabbed the chief executive’s position.
In a letter dated 20 October this year, the Maharashtra government gave post facto approval to Mundhe’s appointment as chief executive officer of the Nagpur Smart City Corporation.
The above-mentioned official said of the two women who Khopde and Datke cited, one as being denied paid maternity leave as she was not eligible for it under the law.
She was a contractual employee who had completed only 21 days. According to the Maternity Benefits Act, an employee has to work at least 80 days in the 12 months before her expected delivery date.
The other woman Khopde and Datke referred to was one of many Smart City Corporation. employees whose services Mundhe had terminated.
In August 2020, CM Thackeray transferred him to the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran as member secretary. On the day of Mundhe’s transfer, a large group of citizens gathered outside his residence and protested the state government’s decision.
Kudos from citizens, brickbats from politicians
In some of Mundhe’s other postings too, especially in civic bodies, politicians have staunchly opposed him, while residents have firmly had his back.
When Mundhe was transferred to Mantralaya from Nashik where he was the civic chief, a large number of people gathered outside the civic body’s headquarters to protest the decision.
While politicians called his conduct arbitrary and disrespectful to the elected class, citizens praised him for cracking down on illegal construction and corruption.
As soon as he took charge, Mundhe prioritised garbage segregation at source, strict action against littering, developing a proper parking policy for the city and demolishing illegal structures.
Protestors held the then Nashik guardian minister Girish Mahajan from the BJP and local BJP leaders responsible for the transfer.
Immediately after Nashik, Mundhe was appointed as joint secretary in the state planning department, but was abruptly moved within days as project director of the state AIDS control society.
Government sources had then said that a senior BJP minister had objected to Mundhe’s original appointment.
Before Nashik, Mundhe’s previous two postings too had ended up the same way. While he had ruffled some political feathers, he earned the appreciation of the larger public.
In his 10 months at the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML), Munde took many unpopular decisions such as a hike in bus pass rates for senior citizens, sacking 158 drivers on contract over their poor attendance record, and even letting go of employees for failure to reduce the number of bus breakdowns.
The moves, he told reporters while leaving, were all intended to reform the organisation. Some citizens groups had raised objections to his transfer.
Similarly, in his posting before PMPML, as civic chief of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the general body had passed a no-confidence motion against Mundhe, with corporators from all parties, excluding the BJP, joining hands.
Mundhe took several stringent decisions such as suspending employees for dereliction of duty, fining establishments for lack of approvals, sealing illegal petrol pumps, acting against hawkers and undertaking demolition drives against illegal construction.
His ‘Walk with the Commissioner’ initiative, where he set out on morning walks in different areas of Navi Mumbai every day and encouraged citizens to directly approach him with complaints, had especially irked the political class. But the initiative was appreciated among citizens’ groups.
Fadnavis, who was the CM then, too had openly backed Mundhe and suspended the Navi Mumbai civic body’s no-confidence motion against him.
At times, different units of the same party have clashed with Mundhe, and stood up in his support at different places.
For instance, while Congress corporators and MLAs have had conflicts with Mundhe, on Tuesday Congress MLA Wadettiwar stood up to defend him.
Similarly, in September 2022, Mundhe was transferred as the commissioner, family welfare of the National Health Mission in Mumbai. However, he was transferred within two months and kept waiting for his next posting.
There was talk that the then health minister, Tanaji Sawant, did not get along with Mundhe and had raised issues with the IAS officer’s style of work. The transfer too, was said to be at his behest.
Sawant had, in an interaction with reporters, denied that he was responsible for the transfer and had attributed it to an administrative decision.
The Amravati unit of the NCP, then undivided, had held a demonstration to protest Mundhe’s transfer when Sawant was in the city after his two-day visit to Melghat.
For the past four months, Mundhe has been serving as secretary in the Persons with Disabilities Welfare department. He has started a drive to identify people holding bogus disability certificates. He has set up an AI-based redressal system for persons with disabilities.
He has also made it compulsory for all government departments to publish information about their employees with disabilities on their websites every year by 1 January to ensure that the 4 percent quota in government services is effectively implemented.
“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past,” Mundhe had said in a post on X on 1 September.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)