IAS Pardeshi to be deputed back to Maha?
Mumbai: Maharashtra’s Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday requested PM Narendra Modi to relieve senior IAS officer, Praveen Pardeshi, as he wants him back in Mumbai. He is currently serving as member of administration at the Capacity Building Commission, Government of India, in New Delhi.
Nicknamed ‘The Disruptor’, bureaucrats at the Maharashtra mantralaya and even a few deputy municipal commissioners posted in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are aghast that Pardeshi may soon be deputed back to the state. A source of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said, “Bureaucrats share common angst against Pardeshi. His style of disruptive decision-making challenges the existing status quo. One deputy municipal commissioner actually asked me to prevent Pardeshi’s return to Mumbai.”
Without a doubt, Pardeshi has earned his nickname of ‘The Disruptor’. During Kerala floods of 2018, he headed the War Room in the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) under then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The CM deployed him to Kerala in order to ensure delivery of medical and essential supplies to flood victims. A KPMG associate, who worked with Pardeshi at the time, told First India, “Our team was tasked by sir (Pardeshi) to bring down the total time taken by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) sanction of funds through corporates for relief material. It was 72 hours as per convention. After ‘disruption’, this timeline was brought down to 24 hours. It was a disruption we are proud of.” During his tenure as BMC chief, Pardeshi’s initiatives including fire brigade efficiency, reducing BEST basic bus fares to five rupees, succeeded in increasing revenues for the civic body, surprising everyone. He was transferred out of BMC and even overlooked for promotion to the post of chief secretary of Maharashtra under the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime. It was Fadnavis then who requested PM Modi to accommodate Pardeshi, who was then deputed to the Ministry of Personnel and from where he is likely to be transferred back to Maharashtra.
