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| - Fact Check: IPS officer Anu Beniwal is NOT the new Puja Khedkar, didn't misuse EWS quota
Hailing from Delhi, Anu Beniwal is a 2022 batch IPS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, currently posted in Gwalior district.
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India Today Fact Check
Anu Beniwal's father is not an IPS officer. Sanjay Baniwal, whose name is visible in the photo, is a retired IPS officer who hails from Anu’s village in Delhi’s Pitampura.
As the controversy over Maharastra cadre trainee IAS officer Puja Khedkar’s OBC and disability certificates rages on, social media has been flooded with allegations of fraudulent use of reservations by several bureaucrats across India. Threads on X have detailed how many Indian Administrative Service, Indian Revenue Service, and Indian Police Service officers allegedly benefitted from EWS or disability quotas despite not being eligible for them.
One such allegation was made against Anu Beniwal, an IPS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre. Many shared a screengrab of an Instagram post from Anu Beniwal’s account and a list of people who cleared the 2021 UPSC civil services exam (CSE). Alongside, they claimed that despite being the child of an IPS officer, Anu took advantage of the economically weaker section (EWS) quota.
The Instagram screenshot showed Anu in the police uniform pointing to the name “Sanjay Baniwal” written on a plaque listing IPS officers of the 1989 batch from different cadres. Many social media posts claimed this was Anu Beniwal’s father. The list of selected CSE candidates showed the EWS category against Anu Beniwal’s name.
Some also question how Anu Beniwal, who was a DANIPS officer before getting selected into IPS, was eligible for the EWS quota. DANIPS stands for Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Police Service.
So, is there any validity to these claims? Let’s take a look:
WHO IS ANU BENIWAL?
Hailing from Delhi, Anu Beniwal is a 2022 batch IPS officer from the Madhya Pradesh cadre, currently posted in the Gwalior district. She cracked the civil services exam of 2021. On July 14, 2024, Beniwal posted a picture with her parents on social media and wrote that while they couldn’t even complete their “school education”, they still pushed her to fulfil her dreams.
This begs the question: How could her father be an IPS officer if he did not finish school? To verify this, India Today Fact Check spoke to Anu Beniwal, who dismissed the social media claims about her father as false and baseless. She said that while her father’s name was Sanjay Beniwal, he was not an IPS officer. She explained that her father had been ill for many years and suffered from hearing and heart issues.
Beniwal said her father started a small button factory many years ago but her uncle had to manage it as her father’s health prevented him from working. She added that her immediate family did not own any land or property and she was raised by her uncle.
We also found an online live interaction with UPSC aspirants from January 2022 where Beniwal said that her parents could not finish their education.
SO, WHO IS 'SANJAY BANIWAL' WHOSE NAME IS SEEN IN PHOTO?
Anu told us that the “Sanjay Baniwal”, whose name was on the plaque and who she referred to as “Tauji” or uncle in her Instagram post caption, is not her father. The post is not visible on Beniwal’s Instagram ID as she archived it after the controversy.
She said Sanjay Baniwal hails from her village in Delhi’s Pitampura, and added: “We are not biologically related. I call him ‘Tauji’ (uncle) as a term of endearment because he is from my village and inspired me a lot in my UPSC journey.” She also stated that her father’s surname was “Beniwal”, not “Baniwal”, which Sanjay uses.
Sanjay Baniwal is a retired IPS officer of the 1989 batch from the AGMUT or the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territory cadre. His last designation was Director General (prisons) in Tihar Jail.
EWS QUOTA DESPITE DANIPS POST?
“It is simple maths,” Anu Beniwal said. Anu scored an all-India rank of 638 in CSE 2020 and was allotted the DANIPS cadre. But Beniwal applied for CSE 2021 under the EWS quota before CSE 2020’s results were announced. As per her, she did not hold a DANIPS post when she applied for the 2021 civil services exams.
India Today confirmed the same from the information available online. The result of CSE 2020 was announced on September 24, 2021, in which Beniwal was selected for DANIPS. However, six months before that, the UPSC notified about the application form for CSE 2021 (Preliminary) on March 4, 2021. The last date for application was March 24, 2021. Thus, she could not have known about her CSE 2020 results when she applied for CSE 2021.
Anu Beniwal also told us that her DANIPS training began in May 2022. “I hadn’t even received my DANIPS salary when I appeared for the CSE 2021 interview,” she told India Today Fact Check.
So, while we haven’t independently verified the validity of her EWS certificate, we could corroborate Anu Beniwal’s statements with government documents available online.
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