Pooja Khedkar, an IAS probationer, has been in news recently for all the wrong reasons. The Maharashtra State Government and its various instrumentalities, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) have also figured in the related news stories. Several news anchors are frothing at the mouth on the alleged incompetence of the UPSC in allowing her to commit the said fraud, so much so that the resignation submitted by the Chairman of the UPSC quite some time back is also being linked to this.
In this entire brouhaha, a number of uncomfortable questions seem to have got missed. This IAS trainee officer had been throwing her weight around during her practical training in the office of Collector, Pune, driving around in a private luxury car with an illegal beacon, and demanding orderlies, office and all other paraphernalia of the district satrapies that the posts of the District Collector and the Superintendent of Police are. Till the media reports started coming out, why did the Collector Pune not control her? As her trainer in practical district training, was he not supposed to first counsel and then if it failed, take suitable punitive action? Every IAS/IPS probationer undergoing practical training is supposed to be attached to a senior officer in the Academy who is supposed to be their counsellor throughout their training.
What was the counsellor of LBSNAA doing? She was first transferred to Washim by the .