Restaurants and food businesses across Maharashtra have been hit with immediate licence suspensions and public enforcement after a high-profile campaign led by the state’s food commissioner, Tukaram Mundhe. Since taking charge in May, Mundhe’s team has carried out thousands of inspections, issued over 1,000 improvement notices and suspended around 300 licences, actions that have made hygiene enforcement visible and pushed several cases into the courts.
The crackdown gained national attention when photographs and videos from raids, including images from a members-only club in Mumbai, spread widely on social media. Mundhe, a 51-year-old Indian Administrative Service officer with more than two decades of experience, has become a recognisable public figure, accumulating more than 3.8 million followers on Instagram as reels of inspections and briefings circulate online.
Mundhe defends the campaign as necessary for public health, saying, "These actions are taken in public health interest. We will continue to take them against violations." He also acknowledged the frequency of his postings and moves between posts, saying, "I have stopped counting my transfers." Supporters point to the scale of the problem uncovered nationally: parliament was told that of 223,808 food samples tested across India in 2025 and 2026, nearly one in five were found to be "non-conforming," meaning unsafe, substandard or mislabelled.
Former food regulator Pawan Agarwal said the difference in Mundhe’s approach is that he has made enforcement visible. Consumers have largely welcomed the speed of action and the new complaints portal, which Mundhe says registered more than 16,000 complaints in its first three months. But the industry has pushed back, arguing the regulator sometimes bypasses statutory procedures and imposes penalties where businesses could make quick fixes.
Hospitality representatives have warned that public naming-and-shaming and immediate suspensions for procedural faults create panic rather than reform. Courts have in several instances described actions by the regulator as high-handed, and some suspensions have been overturned. In August the Bombay high court ordered Mundhe’s department to pay 500,000 rupees in compensation to a sweets shop whose licence remained suspended even after a reinspection found it 98% compliant.
The campaign has therefore sharpened a trade-off: faster, visible enforcement that reassures some consumers, against legal reversals and industry claims of excessive measures. Mundhe says inspections have passed 3,100 by the end of July and he expects the total has since crossed 4,000; the balance between rapid public enforcement and due process looks set to determine the next phase of the controversy.
