Pooja Khedkar is no longer an IAS officer
UPSC cancelled her selection on Wednesday, July 31 and said that she would not be able to appear in any UPSC exam in future. Pooja was accused of giving false information about her age, parents and identity and giving the civil services exam more than the prescribed number of times. After examining the documents, UPSC found Pooja guilty of violating the CSE-2022 rules.
Pooja Khedkar got 841st rank in the exam in 2022. She is a trainee IAS of the 2023 batch. She was training since June 2024.
UPSC said that a show cause notice (SCN) was issued on July 18 for giving the civil services exam more than the prescribed limit by changing her identity. It said that Pooja had to give her reply by July 25, but she asked for time till August 4 to collect the necessary documents for her reply. The commission said, she was again given time till 3:30 pm on July 30, but she did not respond.
15,000 data examined, it was not known how many attempts Pooja gave: Due to case, UPSC examined the data of more than 15,000 recommended candidates from 2009 to 2023. It was found that no other candidate except her had given more attempts than the prescribed number of attempts under the CSE rules. The case of Miss Pooja Khedkar Manorama Dilip Khedkar was unique. She had appeared in the exam several times by changing not only her name but also the name of her parents, so the UPSC’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) could not detect the number of her attempts. UPSC is in the process of strengthening its SOP so that such cases do not happen again in future.
