TLDR:
3 weeks, 200+ FIRs, 300+ arrests, 3cr+ worth of gutka seized. Story behind the IAS officer who is taking Maharashtra's food and drug industry by storm.
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Sharing from my own experience. Yesterday morning, somebody floated a rumour that the state FDA is going to conduct a raid in our town in central MH. Within the next hour, all paan shops shut down. Half of the dairies closed their shutters. A few restaurants decided they didn't wanna do business for the day.
These ripples are being felt all across state over the last 3 weeks, after IAS Tukaram Mundhe took charge as the chief of Food and drug administration department.
It's not the first time he has surfaced on news channels either. Over the last 21 years, he has been transferred 25 times. Stood against Congress MLAs, Shivsena corporators and BJP MPs with the same contempt.
His 25 postings till date could be turned into 25 different Singham-esque movies, although each one of them would have the same disappointing ending of a transfer order landing on the desk. Afterall, power of the people is always greater than the people in power. And our people are corrupt beyond imagination.
Last year, when he took charge of the disability welfare department, first thing he did was to check records of government employees who got recruited by using fake disability certificates.
By March '26, around 316 government officers and employees were caught red-handed, holding fake certificates or claiming a disability status below the legal 40% threshold. Mundhe had them suspended, even went ahead and froze salaries in some cases. Also put another 5k employees under his radar
Not just that, he went after the NGOs supporting this scam. About 900 NGOs had their licenses cancelled, and state funding for these shady practices was stopped.
7 months into this stint, while those remaining 5k employees were about to be probed, the (political?) pressure valve went off, and his 24th transfer order arrived.
That order made a U-turn within 10 days and he was left without an office for a month (that's a story for another day perhaps), when another scandal happened in the state FDA office. ACB caught a clerk while accepting a bribe. Government took swift action and appointed Mundhe as the FDA commissioner to clean FDA's image while obviously letting the honourable minister go scott-free.
His best decision so far is enforcing MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) against guthka supply chains. On paper, guthka has been banned here since 2012. But even when caught with a truckload, it was considered as severe a crime as selling a pouch of expired milk. Now, it will be considered equivalent to carrying a truckload of cocaine.
So 3 weeks later, after watching 3 Cr+ worth of guthka being seized, dairies selling unadulterated milk and paneer not tasting like rubber anymore, citizens of Maharashtra are quietly celebrating this rare form of honest governance, while keeping an eye on the inevitable transfer order which will land soon.
