Praveen Gedam

Dr Praveen Gedam joined the Indian Administrative Service in 2002 (Maharashtra cadre). He has held several important positions in his career and has earlier served the Government of Maharashtra in various capacities. He has served as Municipal Commissioner in Nashik[3] and Jalgoan[4] and District Collector in Solapur[3][5] and Osmanabad.[4] He has also held the positions of CEO of Zila Parishad,[4] Latur and Director of the Groundwater Surveys and Development Agency.[6] In 2016, he was appointed as the Transport Commissioner, in the Government of Maharashtra[7][8]

In 2017, he was appointed as the Private Secretary to Hon'ble Union Cabinet Minister of Railways in the Government of India.[9]

In 2019, he joined National Health Authority as Deputy CEO.[10] Subsequently, he assumed office as Additional CEO, National Health Authority[11] and Mission Director, ABDM. He has been responsible for policy formulation, design, and implementation of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) and steering Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), a flagship programme of Govt of India to establish an integrated digital health ecosystem in India.

While serving as Municipal Commissioner of Jalgaon, he discovered and exposed the Jalgaon housing scam, sometimes called the Jalgaon Gharkul scam (Marathi: जळगाव घरकुल घोटाळा) and filed a police complaint against Khandesh Builders and others with respect to the irregularities he saw after that company was awarded the housing contract. The financial scam involved illicit divertion of approximately ₹110 crore in loaned public municipal funds, that were earmarked for a 1996-initiated project for the building of over 11,000 units of subsidized housing to benefit the area's rural poor population, and to reduce the prevalence of slums. The incident is considered the largest known scam in the history of North Maharashtra.[14][15][16] A strong case framed by Dr Gedam led to the conviction of 54 persons including ministers and mayors.

He is known for the turnaround in Maternal and Child Health indicators in Latur, one of the most backward districts of the state, due to targeted interventions, systematic medical check-ups and massive community mobilization exercises.[17]

While serving as District Collector at Osmanabad, he not only plugged the loot at Tuljabhavani temple at Tuljapur but also helped the temple obtain an ISO certificate in the clean-up process. After he sensed that donations were pilfered on a massive scale, Dr Gedam used multiple direct and indirect methods at the famous temple, which led to astounding results. The income of the temple, which was hovering around Rs7 crore a year, some five to seven kgs of gold and 40-45 kg of silver, jumped four times to Rs 24 crore, excluding gold and silver donations. He also improved physical amenities including a modern darshan mandap, built three modern bhakt niwas (lodging) using traditional designs, developed gardens and improved roads.[18]

As Director, GSDA, he implemented the Solar Dual Pump Water Supply Scheme. It helped provide round-the year tap water pumped without the use of electricity in 10,000 villages in 82 Naxal affected districts of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.[6]

As District Collector of Solapur, Maharashtra, he devised a strategy and came up with Sand Mining Approval and Tracking system (SMAT) to curb illegal sand mining.[19] The system has been adopted across India[20] as the National Sustainable Sand Mining Guidelines.[21][22]

He was entrusted with the responsibility of managing Nashik[23][24] Kumbh Mela 2015 which saw a footfall of 20 million people - one of the largest events in the world. With data and technology driven approach, he executed projects worth Rs 1150 crore to provide infrastructure and services to these people resulting in an incident-free event without a single missing person, epidemic, mishap, injury, or death - the first ever. He presented the success story at the UNDRR and MIT Cambridge.

As Transport Commissioner of Maharashtra, he led digitization of processes in all 50 Regional Transport Office (RTO) offices in the state. He also framed rules for and regularized app based taxi services like Ola and Uber.