Pune Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar. (Twitter@mhaisekar1)
Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar, who was among the top officials in the forefront of Pune’s fight against Covid-19 pandemic, retired on Friday. He is likely to be succeeded by Saurabh Rao, former Pune collector and municipal commissioner of PMC. Since July 11, Rao has been actively coordinating the Covid control efforts in Pune Division as an Officer on Special Duty.
At his last press conference as Divisional Commissioner, Mhaisekar said that his stint in Pune had been his most testing one.
“I have experienced challenges at various postings during my tenure. However, the most testing time has been as the divisional commissioner of Pune. There were floods in Sangli and Kolhapur districts of western Maharashtra… the drought-like situation in parts of Pune Division. Then there were Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The ongoing pandemic has been one such experience,” said Mhaisekar.
He said he was likely to settle in Pune, and would be involved in social work post retirement.
Mhaisekar is a 2003-batch IAS officer with 30 earlier years of service in various state government departments. He he has worked in different capacities as deputy CEO, project director and assistant commissioner in the Aurangabad Division. He has also worked as additional CEO of Jalgaon and was the first registrar of the Veterinary University in Nagpur. He has also served as the Nanded municipal commissioner.
In February 2019, he was appointed as additional divisional commissioner by the then state government helmed by Devendra Fadnavis. At that time, Mhaisekar was serving as the chairman of Nagpur Improvement Trust. The post of additional divisional commissioner was created for the first time for Pune Division and after his appointment, he was also given additional charge as the divisional commissioner. Later, he was promoted to the post of divisional commissioner.
During the floods in Kolhapur and Sangli, as well as the ongoing pandemic, Mhaisekar held regular press conferences to apprise local residents of the situation and the government’s efforts to deal with it.