MUMBAI: Affirmative action has a nice ring to it as it signifies efforts for the empowerment of the weaker sections of society. Unfortunately, it is getting a bad name after news broke recently on how the system was gamed to penetrate the Union Public Service Commission's (UPSC) toughest exam for making it to the civil services.
Falsifying family income, misrepresenting physical abilities to claim the disability quota, forging identity papers and lying about parental separation are some of the ploys unscrupulous elements use to join the steel frame of the country and make it rot.
That a fraudulent case came to light recently only because of the tantrums of a trainee candidate showed the internal gatekeeping mechanisms are a little too rusty. It spawned allegations of many others in the past using similar dubious means to gatecrash into the exclusive club, damaging the credibility of the elite service.
Creamy layer
As many as 27% of the seats in state and Central government-run education institutions and services are reserved for the other backward castes (OBCs), based on the recommendations of the Mandal Commission. The reservation was challenged by Indra Sawhney in the Supreme Court (1992) but a Constitution bench in a landmark verdict upheld the quota. It, however, mandated the skimming out of the creamy layer among the OBCs so that the fruits of affirmative action percolate to the most disadvantaged people in society.
The Central government then constituted a commission led by Justice Ram Nandan Prasad to identify the creamy layer. Going by its recommendations, if your parents are not directly recruited as Class 1 (Group A) or Class 2 (Group B) officers or they do not occupy any constitutional posts (like that of President of India, Vice President, Governor, etc), chances are you would be eligible for the non-creamy layer.
If parents are not employed by the government, their income should be within the prescribed limits for eligibility to the non-creamy layer. The present cap on annual income to qualify for the non-creamy layer of the OBC quota is Rs 8 lakh for three consecutive years.
When the creamy layer concept was first introduced, the family income limit was set at Rs 1 lakh per annum (1993). It was raised to Rs 2.5 lakh in 2004, Rs 4.5 lakh in 2008, Rs 6 lakh in 2013 and Rs 8 lakh in 2017. A proposal to lift it further to Rs 12 lakh in urban areas and Rs 9 lakh in rural India has been pending with the Centre since 2011. The wage ceiling was also proposed to be linked to inflation and revised every three years.
Trainee IAS officer Puja Khedkar is in the news for all the wrong reasons as she is accused of fraudulently producing a non-creamy layer certificate though her father Dilip Khedkar is a multi-crorepati. He retired as a Maharashtra government Class I officer and sought to contest the recent Lok Sabha elections on the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s ticket from Ahmednagar.
In his poll affidavit, he stated his total assets were Rs 40 crore and the annual income was Rs 49 lakh.
Even Puja's statement on her immovable property as of 2023 showed she had five plots and two apartments against her name in the state with a total market value of Rs 22 crore.
In Maharashtra, the Scheduled Castes have 13% reservation, Scheduled Tribes 7%, OBC 19% and special backward classes 2%. Besides, the nomadic tribes have four quota classifications — NT-A 3%, NT-B 2.5%, NT-C 3.5% and NT-D 2%. They all add up to 52%. Puja belongs to the Wanjari community that is part of NT-D in Maharashtra, but comes under the Central government's OBC list.
Her unprofessional conduct while on probation in Pune as assistant director in the Sport Authority of India led to a conflict with the collectorate and her transfer to Washim, which opened the can of worms.
Change in name and disability
In 2019, when she appeared in the UPSC exam, she gave her name as Khedkar Puja Diliprao and stood 11,244th in the rank list. Two years later, she took the name of Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar and claimed her eligibility for two quotas — OBC and PwBD 1 (person with benchmark disability). PwBD 1 stands for a person with not less than 40% disability. Her certificate claimed she has poor eyesight.
PwBD candidates of the general/OBC/EWS categories are allowed a maximum of nine attempts while SC/ST PwBD candidates get unlimited attempts in case they are otherwise eligible. The upper age limit for taking an exam, too, is relaxable up to a maximum of 10 years. The maximum attempts in the general/EWS category is six with age cap of 32, for OBCs nine and age ceiling of 35, and for SC/STs unlimited till 37 years of age.
Within two years, Puja got her certificate changed from PwBD single disability to multiple disability, adding mental illness and 7% damage in a knee.
Multiple disabilities are quite rare, so such candidates are few in number. That gave her an IAS posting though her All India Rank in the 2022 UPSC exam was 821. Each year, the IAS intake is less than 200.
As per the UPSC's notification for civil services, there are five categories of persons with benchmark disabilities. The first one is blindness and low vision; the second is deaf and hard hearing; the third one is locomotor disability, including cerebral palsy, cured leprosy and dwarfism dystrophy, the fourth is autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, and mental illness; while the fifth includes multiple disabilities, which can be a mixture of any of the four categories like deaf-blind.
In 2007, Puja's certificates said she was mentally and physically fit for admission to Pune's Kashibai Navale Medical College. Later she claimed disability and to get those certificates, she used multiple residential addresses, one of which included her mother Manorama's factory, which is illegal as per law. This factory was demolished by the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation because it has not paid taxes for the last two years.
Disability scam
The Ahmednagar district civil hospital issued the disability certificate to Puja in 2018, yet when she was called by AIIMS Delhi for physical verification as many as six times after her selection for IAS - as mandated by the UPSC - there was no show under some or the other pretext.
The certificate was issued by the Ahmednagar hospital after she allegedly paid Rs 30,000 as bribe. Puja is a resident of Pune, so she ought to have obtained her disability certificate from there instead of getting it from elsewhere.
UPSC rule and actions
UPSC rules mandate that a candidate must have a minimum of 40% disability to avail of reservation under that quota. Such candidates get relaxation in the age limit and the number of attempts to take the exam. Puja allegedly fraudulently used the disability certificates to increase her number of attempts to take the exam.
UPSC has since determined that she manipulated her identity to appear for the civil services exam multiple times, exceeding the permissible attempts. It issued her a show cause notice on the cancellation of her candidature and intends to bar her from future exams.
The UPSC also filed a complaint with the Delhi Police.
"UPSC has filed a complaint with Delhi Police against Ms Puja Manorama Dilip Khedkar for misrepresenting and falsifying facts to obtain extra attempts in the UPSC examinations, beyond the prescribed limit. Consequently, a case has been registered under the relevant sections of the law, and investigation has been taken up in the Crime Branch," the Delhi Police said in a statement.
Officials indicated that the case involves charges of forgery, cheating, and misuse of the disability quota in securing her civil services candidacy.
Separation ruse
In a mock interview that has gone viral, Puja is purportedly seen claiming that her parents had separated, forcing her to stay with her mother and has zero income. Parental separation is an alleged ruse adopted by quite a few candidates to get admission in a government college or seek jobs under the OBC and the Economically Weaker Section quotas.
Such separations/divorce are only on paper so as to reduce the parent's income and stay under the Rs 8 lakh creamy layer radar. In Puja's case, too, her parents continue to live together, as is borne out by her father's election affidavit. In fact, he has shown properties and ornaments in his spouse's name. Besides, some of the income is shown as joint.
High connections?
After selection as a trainee IAS officer, the UPSC directed Puja to complete her medical tests and verify her disability certificates, but she ducked it. When the UPSC threatened to cancel her selection, she went to the Central Administrative Tribunal, which too refused to give her relief.
But the Centre’s department of personal training (DoPT) overruled it and sent her for IAS training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy for Administration at Mussoorie.
She completed her training and was allotted the Maharashtra cadre for two years as a probationary officer. Her first posting was in Bhandara in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, but within a day she got it changed to her home town of Pune, which is completely irregular.
As per service officers' rules, the first posting of a trainee IAS officer should not be in his/her hometown, yet she successfully managed to pull strings for the Pune posting.