IAS officer Sanjeev Jaiswal writes to Maharashtra CM, accuses ex-corporator of mental harassment

Letter alleges Sanjay Ghadigaonkar was part of the gang that started an era of blackmailing and extortion in the Thane Municipal Corporation

Municipal Commissioner Sanjeev Jaiswal.

Senior IAS officer Sanjeev Jaiswal has written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray accusing Sanjay Ghadigaonkar, a former corporator of the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC), of mental harassment.

Mr. Jaiswal was recently transferred as Additional Commissioner from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to Managing Director of the State Fisheries Development Corporation. In his letter, the officer alleged that Mr. Ghadigaonkar was a member of the “Golden Gang”, which started “an era of blackmailing and extortion in the TMC with the support of the police”.

Mr. Jaiswal said Mr. Ghadigaonkar’s enmity and hostility against him started when he disqualified him as a corporator of the Congress party from the TMC after his bogus caste certificate was set aside by the Caste Scrutiny Committee. He had filed an appeal against it in the High Court and Supreme Court, however, his appeal was dismissed, the letter said. Mr. Jaiswal was the then municipal commissioner of the TMC.

The IAS officer has also alleged that Mr. Ghadigaonkar was a “RTI blackmailer”. “A big racket of RTI blackmailers based on a complaint of the sitting MLA Pratap Sarnaik was exposed in the TMC and in my report submitted to the police, one of the names of the of RTI blackmailers was of Sanjay Ghadigaonkar,” Mr. Jaiswal said.

The IAS officer said he was writing the letter “not because I am afraid of his complaints but to bring to your kind notice as to how this Sanjay Ghadigaonkar has been harassing me mentally both during my tenure as MC [municipal commissioner] and even after that”. “I am fully aware that I am still under threats and after this letter my life would come more under threat but I thought it’s high time that I should bring all this on record so that I can get some justice and respite from these repeated bogus, frivolous and mentally disturbing complaints,” he said.

This is the second letter by an officer in the past few months. Earlier, former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh had written to the Chief Minister accusing former home minister Anil Deshmukh of demanding ₹100 crore as extortion money from another officer. Mr. Deshmukh denied the charge, but resigned from his post. The Central Bureau of Investigation is still probing the case.