The Secret Tukaram Mundhe Won't Reveal

Whether it's a five-star banquet hall, a school lunch supplier, a blood bank, or a Bollywood actors' surrogate advertisements, Tukaram Mundhe seems to have an opinion, a bye-law, and very possibly an inspection team on standby.

Maharashtra's Food and Drugs Administration Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe, who by some accounts has become more popular than Amitabh Bachchan, because of his strict enforcement of laws governing selling of food items in Maharashtra, has a secret that he refused to reveal in public.

At an 'informal' meet-the-press organised by the Mumbai Press Club, the dashing 51-year-old IAS officer from the 2005 batch, who has had the reputation of being transferred 25 times in his 21 years of service, just wouldn't budge and reveal who is in charge of inspecting the kitchen of the man, whose team has been keeping the entire hotels and eateries businesses in Maharashtra on tenterhooks ever since he took charge as FDA Commissioner on May 25, 2026.

Replying to one of the three questions posed by Rediff, Mundhe diplomatically stonewalled repeated efforts to reveal who is in charge of inspection of the kitchen at his home.

"Not me," he replied jovially while answering the question during his response to Rediff.

"Kya ek baar main hi saare secrets jaan loge tum? (Do you want me to reveal all the secrets to you in one go)?" Mundhe asked, revealing the lighter side of a man who has become the darling of people in Maharashtra for taking on establishments vending food from unhealthy and unhygienic kitchens, to taking on film stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Tiger Shroff and Ajay Devgn for their endorsement of pan masala brands via surrogate advertisements.

You ask him any question and try cornering him and he rattles out laws, bye-laws and sections under relevant laws governing the violation of safety standards governing food and drugs.

He answers every difficult question posed to him with ease and calm that comes with the experience of having the privilege of being bundled out of his respective responsibilities by the government of the day 25 times since 2005.

'My Only Vested Interest Is The People Of Maharashtra'

But the kitchen question was merely the appetiser. The main course arrived earlier, when this reporter asked him if he would like to justify bold assertion of the Mumbai Press Club's incumbent President S Balakrishnan that he was merely "doing his duties without any vested interests”.

Was his much-publicised crusade against adulterated food and filthy kitchens, driven by some "vested interest"?

And while we're at it, was his own posting itself a kind of a "creative diversion" engineered by powers "who had the authority to appoint and transfer" honest public servants at their whims, fancies and pressures from vested interests and whether he too could be as easily transferred out in the next six months flat?

Mundhe, who has clearly heard tougher questions in 21 years of being shuffled around the state like a pack of cards, did not flinch. "Sorry, come again," he said first, buying himself some time, before deciding to meet the question head-on rather than duck it.

His vested interest, he said, was Maharashtra itself. "People of my state are my vested interest," he said.

Serving the state's food and drug safety was, in his words, the only interest he had "when I am appointed as a Commissioner FDA."

He was careful to draw a line between pride and grievance: He wasn't boasting about the job, and he certainly wasn't cribbing about it either. He was simply doing it.

Any suggestion of murkier motives, he made clear, didn't even brush past his imagination, let alone his conduct.

"That's my career for the last 21 (years, or), whatever service I have had as a public servant," he said, effectively daring anyone to find a stray vested interest hiding somewhere in that record.

Not My Call, Take It Up With the Government

As for whether his appointment was some sort of engineered "creative diversion," the Commissioner did something bureaucrats rarely do in front of a live microphone: He passed the question along, politely but firmly, to the people who actually deserved it.

See: Tukaram Munde answers Rediff

Posting, he reminded his audience, was never his demand. It is entirely the prerogative of the government, and if anyone wanted answers about the math behind who gets posted where and for how long, they were welcome to walk that question over to the "authorities, who have the power to make such transfers" themselves.

He, for one, was not going to attempt to read the tea leaves on his own transfer.

It was a classic on-job-training-Tukaram-Mundhe move learnt since the last 25 years: Acknowledge the question, decline the bait, and hand the microphone right back without breaking a sweat, all in the same breath he'd use to recall a food-safety bye-law in response to a pointed question.

Five-Star, Ten-Star, No Star -- Everyone's Getting Inspected

The last of the pointed questions took a direct swing at the Commissioner's appetite for confrontation: Was the FDA shying away from inspecting five-star hotel kitchens while going after the smaller, more visible eateries?

Mundhe treated the suggestion the way he treats an expired sell-by date food item -- with zero tolerance. He walked the press through the department's complaint machinery: A toll-free number that predates his tenure but has since been beefed up, a dedicated email address, calls fielded directly at his own office, and a newly launched online portal.

See: Excuses received on raids

Between the four channels, he revealed, the FDA has logged over 16,000 complaints in just the last three months.

Every single one gets analysed, he said, and weighed against the eight categories of "high-risk" food laid down by the Food Safety Authority's own rulebook.

"So we don't count whether it's a 5-star, 10-star eateries," he said, destroying the premise of the question in one line. Action, he insisted, cuts across geography and category -- godowns, chain restaurants, dark kitchens, online food platforms, dhabas, clubs, across Maharashtra, all of it.

Enforcement action is being taken against establishments irrespective of size or reputation, including five-star and high-end eateries, a point Mundhe has now made publicly on more than one occasion. And that his department is determined to make transparency its calling card: the FDA regularly publishes details of inspections and enforcement action, complete with photographs and videos, on an almost daily basis.

Monitoring Mid-Day Meal Suppliers, High-Fat Salty, Sugary Foods...

The Commissioner, clearly in no hurry to leave, fielded a fair bit more before the presser wound down.

The FDA has stepped up inspections of mid-day meal suppliers to schoolchildren and Mundhe confirmed that one supplier's licence has already been suspended after eight to ten vendors were tested -- a reminder that Mundhe's checklist stretches well beyond restaurant menus and into the lunchboxes of the state's schoolkids.

See: Tukaram Mundhe shares his hobbies

He also flagged a fresh order aimed at ensuring a more balanced diet in schools, and, in the same breath, tightened the screws on blood banks, insisting that donation drives can only be run by licensed organisations and must remain strictly voluntary.

With the festive season approaching, Mundhe wasn't just thinking mithai counters and street-food stalls; he outlined a phased action plan covering the run-up to, during, and after the festivities, while nudging citizens to go easy on high-fat, salty and sugary foods (HFSS) -- sound advice that, coming from the man currently cleaning up Maharashtra's kitchens, carried rather more weight than the average dietician's.

What is on the record is this: Whether it's a five-star banquet hall, a school lunch supplier, a blood bank, or a Bollywood actors' surrogate advertisements, Tukaram Mundhe seems to have an opinion, a bye-law, and very possibly an inspection team on standby.

The only kitchen that appears to be permanently out of bounds, though, is his own.