Railways merges 8 cadres into one
NEW DELHI: Railway officers will now be promoted solely on merit and not seniority, the national transporter has decided while merging its eight service cadre into the new Indian Railways Management Service, according to a gazette notification issued on Friday.
“In the existing system, officers were promoted based on their seniority level (considering their date of joining), but in the new method, promotion to officers will be given purely on the basis of merit,” a railway official said, requesting anonymity.
“This will help in faster and professional decisionmaking and implementation.”
“This is a better system,” said Shree Prakash, a former railway official. “It is the resumption of the old method that will boost officers to take up challenging positions, thus benefiting railways and people at large. It will improve the railways.”
The decision to merge the eight service cadres into one — notified in the gazette on May 27 — aims at bringing uniformity in the appointment system, and reducing interdepartmental and elaborate processes, besides expediting coordinated and fast decisionmaking, said a second railways official, who declined to be named.
The eight services fall under the central civil services. According to the gazette notification, the existing Indian Railway Services of Engineering, the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineering, the Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineering, the Indian Railways Service of Signal Engineers, the Indian Railway Store Services, the Indian Railway Traffic Services, the Indian Railway Account Service and the Indian Railway Personnel Service will be merged into the
Indian Railway Management Service. The Union cabinet on December 24, 2019, approved the merger based on the recommendations of the Bibek Debroy committee report of 2015, in which suggestions were made to restructure the railway board and ministry.
The unification, will mean that railways is left with just two departments, namely the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Medical Service Department (MSD). Proposed under then railway minister Piyush Goyal, the reform will be carried out at all levels, from Junior Scale to Higher Administrative Grade (HAG) plus.
Under this, as many as 27 General Manager (GM) posts have been upgraded to ‘apex’ grade.