Mother to trainee IAS officer, homeopath and aspiring politician — who is Manorama Khedkar?

Manorama comes from a family with a background in civil services. Her father, Jagannath Budhavant, had been a senior state civil servant who retired as an IAS officer. He had joined the state civil service in 1964 as a deputy collector after clearing the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC). He had served in several districts including Ahmednagar, Sangli, Solapur, and Pune during the service. Later in his career, he was promoted to the rank of IAS and was made managing director, Tribal Development Corporation. He also served as an additional director for the Social Welfare Department before retiring. He passed away in 2019.

Manorama is married to Dileep Khedkar, who served in the Maharashtra state service and had retired recently. Although her daughter had claimed in a mock interview that her parents are separated, all other evidence including the election affidavits of the two show they are a married couple.

Manorama Khedkar submits her candidate form for Sarpanch election in October 2017. She won the election and served for five years. (Express)

Manorama’s brother, Sudhakar Budhavant, is a deputy RTO. Her brother-in-law (Dileep Khedkar’s brother) Manik Khedkar, known locally as Mama, is an active politician linked to the BJP in Ahmednagar district and had served as the taluka president for the party until recently.

The Khedkars come from the Vanjari community, which is one of the influential OBC groups in Maharashtra. The family has tried to gain proximity to major leaders from the community such as Pankaja Munde. Manorama had donated Rs 12 lakh to the Gopinath Munde Foundation last year and offered a crown to a local deity as pledge fulfillment after Pankaja was nominated Lok Sabha candidate.

Homeopathic doctor

Manorama is a homeopath by qualification. As per the Central Register of Homeopathy, she completed the Licentiate of Court of Examiners in Homoeopathy (LCEH) in May 1989.

The four-year course was started in the Maharashtra in but was discontinued in the late 1980s. Khedkar is possibly among the last candidates to complete the course. In her election affidavit submitted in April 2024 – when she was a substitute candidate for her husband in case his election nomination ran into trouble – she submitted that her highest educational qualification is Bachelor of Homoeopathic Medicine and Surgery (BHMS) with a certificate course in Gynaecology and Obstetrics (CGO). She has not disclosed the year she attained this qualification and the institute in which she studied.

In a media interview, Dileep Khedkar had claimed that Manorama got her gun license about 24 years ago when she had a clinic in Wadarwadi slums in Shivajinagar area of Pune.

Jagannath Budhavant, Manorama Khedkar’s father, is often referred to as the ‘First IAS officer from Vanjari community’ of Maharashtra. (Photo: Vanjari World)

“She was practising in the slum and goons would often come and threaten her. She met the CP (Commissioner of Police) who offered to grant her a gun licence. Since then she has had the firearm licence,” Khedkar had stated in the interview.

Political ambition

Manorama and Dileep Khedkar became active in politics even before the latter’s retirement from the service. Even after his retirement, they used his status as a senior government functionary to their advantage. The fact that Manik Khedkar was the taluka chief of BJP at that time might have helped them in their political pursuits.

“The family started their political activities by setting up an NGO called Parivartan Prathishthan and conducted several projects and campaigns in the Khedkar family’s ancestral village of Bhalgaon and its neighbourhood. These included watershed projects, organising social events, and skill training for local women. They also set up a Covid-19 centre during the pandemic. She is quite popular in the village and that’s why some of them have come out in support of the family and are seeing a political conspiracy in the entire controversy,” said a journalist based in Pathardi who works with a Marathi daily. He said that there’s a feeling among the family’s supporters in Bhalgaon that it is being deliberately targeted by “some powerful people” who were hurt by Khedkar’s contesting the Lok Sabha poll.

She became the sarpanch of Bhalgaon after winning the election in October 2017 and served for five years. She has actively tried to expand her influence in other villages of the block. In April 2024, she campaigned for her husband when he contested as an independent candidate supported by Bahujan Vikas Aghadi and Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.

The FIR registered at Paud Police Station against her, her husband Dilip and others for threatening farmers, after a video of the incident from June 2023 went viral, is the first criminal case against her.

On Thursday morning, police arrested her from a low-key lodge in Mahad in Raigad district where she had checked in under the false name of Indubai Dhakne. Since then they have also recovered the pistol she had allegedly brandished from their National Society house.