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This is an archive article published on July 29, 2024

No fault in disability certificate issued to Puja Khedkar: PCMC chief

The civic body chief said the certificate was issued following a proper clinical assessment by a senior doctor.

probationary IAS officer Puja KhedkarIAS probationer Puja Khedkar. (Instagram/ dr_pujamdk_ias)

Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Shekhar Singh on Monday denied that he found fault with the seven per cent disability certificate issued by the civic-run YCM hospital (YCMH) to controversial IAS probationer Puja Khedkar.

The civic body chief said the certificate was issued following a proper clinical assessment by a senior doctor.

“There is no truth in the speculation that I have ordered another inquiry… I have only raised a query and asked the internal inquiry committee to reply to it. The media reports in this connection are wrong,” the PCMC told this paper.

When asked whether the certificate was issued by a trainee doctor, the PCMC said, “This is wrong information as well that is being spread. The certificate was issued by a senior resident medical officer. The doctor is a Master’s in orthopaedics.”

Singh said that a seven per cent locomotor disability certificate will not be accepted by any government authority when the benchmark is 40 per cent. “You can combine two certificates of the same institute but can’t combine two certificates issued by two institutes,” he said. Puja Khedkar was also issued a disability certificate by Ahmednagar civil hospital.

The YCMH had conducted the internal inquiry, following directions from the district collectorate.

Civic officials said Khedkar had submitted a ration card copy which carried the address of a commercial property in Talawade. “She had claimed that she was a resident of Pimpri-Chinchwad,” officials said.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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