National

The Little Big Man

Khairnar takes on his bosses yet again, this time to retain his job

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The Little Big Man
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DEPUTY Municipal Commissioner Govind Ragho Khairnar refuses to go quietly. The man who contributed to the Congress defeat in the last assembly elections with a high-pitched campaign against Sharad Pawar, will not accept his removal from office without a fight. Instead, he plans to challenge in court the Bombay Municipal Corporation's (BMC) showcause notice asking why he shouldn't be dismissed from service.

Khairnar calls the departmental enquiry instituted against him after he was suspended in 1994 "malafide" and, under the BMC Act, without authority. He says it was conducted under "political pressure" and adds that the vote for his dismissal at a general body meeting of the BMC did not have the requisite five-eighth of the total prescribed by the Act. These will be a part of his case against the BMC.

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This is a lesser fight for Khairnar who has earned a name as the little man who challenged the establishment. In his own words: "It's been a career characterised by shouting at the top of my voice that what is going on is very, very dangerous for the nation and for society". That he chose to shout at Pawar—then the chief minister—didn't endear him to his bosses. But it made him a national hero. And much before the BMC suspended him, requests poured in for public speeches from far-off places like Varanasi and Chandigarh.

Khairnar's unimpeachable honesty and reckless courage reaffirmed a good reputation, but to those who supported his anti-corruption tirade, he often seemed a loose cannon. He promised truckloads of evidence against Pawar and produced nothing. Some found him "arrogant, impulsive and unpredictable". Julio Ribeiro, who moved away after once sharing a platform with Khairnar, found him guilty of violating service rules. "You can't hold office and shout against your superiors at the same time," says the retired tough cop.

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His shouting soon angered Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and led to a position where the Sena wanted him out while the Congress, which had started the war against him, opposed a BMC resolution for Khairnar's dismissal when it came up for vote. This time, with most of the 109 Congress municipal corporators having resigned after the mayoral election cross-voting scandal, there was scant backing except forthe Third Front and Congressman Rustom Tirandaz's rhetoric. "The point I made was that Khairnar's honesty breaks the traditions of our civic employees, so he must go. History is replete with people who had to drink hemlock," says Tirandaz.

The Sena, with 72 corporators, could sway Khairnar's future. It's electoral ally, the BJP, chose to stay neutral. Madhu Chavan, who heads the BJP's civic affairs, said the party backed what Khairnar said but not from where he said it. Says Chavan: "The fight is right. What he said is right—corruption must be fought. But while doing so he broke discipline—it's like a deputy commissioner speaking against the police commissioner." The departmental enquiry found him guilty of making baseless statements against politicians; attending public meetings without approval from the municipal commissioner and lack of care while carrying out demolitions—he was in charge of a special demolition squad formed to bring down illegal buildings—which left the BMC with a lot of litigation. The report, completed in December '94, recommended his removal.

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Now that the BMC has voted to have him out—Khairnar has a month to answer why he made allegations of corruption in 1994 against Pawar—the 55-year-old offi-cial says he will answer it in court. He calls it a move under "political pressure" from a man who has "remote-controlled his way from poverty to immense wealth". Questioning Thackeray's motives, Khairnar says "maybe he should try controlling his sons first". The reference to son Jaidev's alleged connection with some extortion bids did not go down well with Thackeray.

But the restrictions of office have never gagged Khairnar. In fact, his outspokenness has earned him a kind of adulation that borders on hero-worship. For the poor peasant's son from Vakhari Pimpal village in Nashik, that means much more than rising to the post of deputy municipal corporator in the BMC, which he had joined in 1975. "I am just not bothered about whether I'm dismissed, whether I am killed, whether my family is killed," says Khairnar. And that should bother his enemies—he is a man with nothing to lose. 

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