The Mundhe Code: Nobody’s too big to be spared

In Maharashtra, 51-year-old Tukaram Mundhe is already part of IAS folklore. At every new posting, this officer, so the legend goes, assumes charge with a file in one hand and a transfer order in the other.

His reputation preceded him into the Maharashtra FDA (Food and Drug Administration) office, where he walked in as the new Commissioner on 25 May 2026. This is Mundhe’s 25th posting in a career spanning 21 years — a good indicator of his penchant for taking on powerful politicians and business interests and his style of enforcement. He reminds you of former crusader-bureaucrats like G.R. Khairnar and Arun Bhatia, who were sticklers for the law and were known to enforce it without exception, without fear or favour.

The FDA is an important department with a lax and unmotivated workforce. It is not a ‘lucrative’ posting. But within days of Mundhe joining, it looked like the department had found its mojo. Its food inspectors found a sense of urgency, and businesses that usually treated notices with disregard began counting the cost of non-compliance.

Within weeks, the state FDA had launched raids across the state — restaurants, dairies, food manufacturers, warehouses, gutkha networks, cosmetic traders and pharmaceutical establishments were all under scrutiny.

By late July, the department had reported 1,131 inspections; seizures worth Rs 49.6 crore and the suspension of 56 restaurant licences. Even big clubs weren’t spared. He had the same staff, the same team, the same labs — but the method had changed. Mundhe simply says he brought in SOPs, optimised the functioning of labs and motivated the inspectors.

The establishments in the state FDA net are not roadside kitchens; there are big reputations at stake: K. Rustom & Co., Shalimar, Noor Mohammadi and the 110-year-old Parsi Dairy Farm — institutions woven into Mumbai’s memory; Goras Bhandar, the iconic dairy in Wardha with links to old Gandhian institutions; and the Cricket Club of India canteen, an elite destination for Mumbai’s who’s who.

The Mundhe method is blunt: it makes no exceptions for the reputation of a business concern. In his code, reputation is not licence, whether you are selling ice cream, biryani or nostalgia. A heritage claim won’t excuse mouldy, fungus-infested walls, unsafe storage, pest-control failures or expired stock. When Shalimar restaurant reported 25 violations during a follow-up inspection, the message grew sharper — the FDA would not stop at warnings; it was willing to shut down the establishment.

For an industry accustomed to uneven enforcement, Mundhe’s first public formulation was characteristically spare: “No leniency whatsoever” for anyone playing with public health. He insisted the campaign was no exhibition of power but principled enforcement.

“I am following the law,” he told a Marathi news channel recently in one of his many interviews. “This is what we are supposed to do.” But so rare is the practice of officials scrupulously upholding the law, that when a Mundhe shows up, it takes everyone by surprise.

After restaurant kitchens, the drive visited the gutkha economy. In early June, the FDA asked its officers to coordinate with police to consider invoking the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against networks manufacturing and distributing gutkha, tobacco and nicotine-containing paan masala banned in the state.

Mundhe’s argument was that the drive was not targeting the small shopkeeper who might hide a prohibited packet and sell it under the counter. The gutkha chain involves dummy firms, secret warehouses, interstate supply lines, fake invoices and forged documents. Mundhe understands that the cost of non-compliance can be priced into a business, and believes therefore that organised crime has to be dismantled.

In early July, FDA sleuths raided a gutkha manufacturing unit in Akola, and seized material, machinery and banned products worth Rs 1.23 crore. On 14 August, Mundhe’s department sent show-cause notices to three Bollywood stars — Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff — over their appearance in advertisements for ‘Vimal Elaichi’, which the FDA views as possible surrogate promotion for the company’s prohibited paan masala products.

The actors must respond within 15 days. Whether the FDA notices survive legal scrutiny is another matter, but the symbolism is unmistakable: celebrity, like heritage, does not grant immunity.

The campaign has also entered less dramatic but intimate spaces of everyday consumption. Raids in Crawford Market, Kandivali and Karad in Satara district have led to the seizure of cosmetics worth Rs 34.6 lakh, including allegedly counterfeit, unlabelled and misleading products.

Rural dairies operating without licences reportedly began destroying thousands of litres of milk stock out of fear of raids. Mundhe’s response combined threat with instruction: register, comply and join the system. He also urged consumers to check registrations, question dubious products and report adulteration. In this schema, the frightened trader and the alert consumer are both part of the same regulatory theatre.

FDA inspections have found synthetic milk being manufactured with substances including urea, detergents, caustic soda, starch, glucose, formalin and other chemicals. The regulator has found antibiotic residues and other contaminants above permissible limits. In July, Mundhe tightened the entire milk supply chain — from collection centres and dairies to transporters, wholesalers and retailers — making traceability, cold-chain maintenance and food-safety systems mandatory.

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Mundhe comes from a farming family in Marathwada. He is a fitness enthusiast, and entered the IAS after securing an all-India rank of 20 in the 2004 UPSC examination. He joined the Maharashtra cadre in 2005. His career has been a catalogue of difficult but eventful assignments and short tenures.

As he put it to another interviewer, with a smile: “I have lost count.” [of the transfers].

In Solapur, he went after illegal sand mining, water irregularities and tanker dependence, earning the sobriquet ‘Waterman of Maharashtra’.

In Navi Mumbai, as municipal commissioner, he walked the city at dawn, targeted unauthorised constructions and hoardings, and pushed revenue collection. A property tax investigation he led uncovered hundreds of crores in unpaid dues. Corporators across parties responded with a no-confidence motion; residents rallied behind him. In Pune’s public transport undertaking, in Nashik’s civic administration and later in Nagpur as municipal commissioner during the Covid-19 crisis, he went after hospitals accused of exploiting patients’ fear and charging exorbitant bills.

His short-lived tenures have a recurring pattern: a surge in administrative energy in the department he joins, public approval, political discomfort and eventual transfer. At public functions, wherever he goes, he receives standing ovations.

His admirers see a civil servant who refuses to bend rules for the powerful — politicians, contractors or businesses that are accustomed to bending rules. But his critics see an administrator who treats consultation as delay and elected public representatives as obstacles rather than stakeholders in a democracy.

Small businesses, like paan shopowners, have protested ‘indiscriminate action’. The Bombay High Court has now reminded the FDA that power must be used judiciously. In the Cadila Pharmaceuticals matter, the court criticised the regulator’s “shoot first and ask questions later” approach after sale and distribution of some medicines were stopped and stock seized without a prior hearing. The FDA agreed to withdraw its orders and proceed through show-cause notices.

The real test of Mundhe’s FDA tenure will not be how many shutters he can pull down, but whether he can convert his zero-tolerance approach to violations into institutional memory — clear procedures, predictable inspections, trained field staff, transparent hearings and a culture in which compliance is routine rather than panic-driven.

Jaideep Hardikar is a senior Nagpur-based journalist and author of Ramrao: The Story of India’s Farm Crisis. More by him here