Cabinet approves restructuring of Railway Board, merging cadres

NEW DELHI: In a step towards the reform of Indian Railways, Union Cabinet approved major decisions on Tuesday – importantly, the restructuring of the Railway Board. Reducing the number to four members and a chairperson of earlier board format, now the new single 'Railway Management System' will have eight members altogether (official recruitment). Only the members for Operation, Business Development, Human Resources, Infrastructure and Finance will be there, instead of members for Traffic, Rolling Stock, Traction and Engineering, the ministry confirmed.

"Railway board will no longer be organised on departmental lines, and replaced with a leaner structure organised on functional lines. It will have a Chairman, who will act as 'Chief Executive Officer (CEO)' along with 4 Members responsible for Infrastructure, Operations and Business Development, Rolling Stock and Finance respectively. The Chairman shall be the cadre controlling officer responsible for Human resources (HR) with assistance from a DG (HR). Three apex level posts shall be surrendered from Railway Board and all the remaining posts of the Railway Board shall be open to all officers regardless of the service to which they belonged," a communiqué mentioned.

Some independent members will also be recruited in the new management system, however, the number will be decided later. They will be highly distinguished professionals and should have 30 years of experience including at the top levels in the industry – finance, economics and management fields, the ministry mentioned. Their recruitment aims to help the new board in setting a strategic direction.

The officers will be adjusted in the same pay and rank till their retirement in the restructured board, the ministry confirmed.

Second, the Union Cabinet also approved the merging of railway cadres, which will now be called Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS), rail minister Piyush Goyal announced calling it a historical move. All eight Group A services of Indian Railways will now be merged into the central service called IRMS. The minister said that both decisions to merge cadres and restructure the Railway Board were done on functional lines.

Furthermore, the unification of services was recommended by various committees for reforming Indian Railways by time to time including – the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).

"Unification of services will end this 'departmentalism', promote the smooth working of Railways, expedite decision making, create a coherent vision for the organisation and promote rational decision making," an official statement by the ministry mentioned.