Indian Railways gets A Corporate Makeover with Major Organisational Restructuring

The Union Cabinet on December 24 gave approval to a major organisational restructuring of the Indian Railways leading to the merging of the existing eight wings of the Railways into a single Central Service called Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) withing a time period of one-year.

Crux of the Matter

1. Under the new organisational structure approved, the Railway Board will be headed by Chairman Railway Board (CRB) who will be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with 4 members and some independent members.

2. The modalities and unification of the services will be worked out in consultation with Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

3. Indian Railway Medical Service (IRMS) will be renamed as Indian Railway Health Service (IRHS).

4. Alternate Mechanism will be appointed within a year by the Cabinet to ensure fairness and transparency.

5. The chairman will be the cadre controlling officer for human resources (HR) with assistance from a Director General (HR)

6. To facilitate recruitment and creation of the new service DoPT and UPSC will be consulted to recruit engineers/non-engineers as per need.

7. The steps have been taken to boost the programme of modernising railway system and providing the highest standards of safety, speed and services to the passengers as the proposed investment of Rs 50 lakh crore over the next 12 years requires fast decision making from all departments. 

8. Unification of services was recommended by various committees namely the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).

9. Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal said, “Unification of services will end departmentalism and promote the smooth working of Railways, create a coherent vision for the organisation and promote rational decision making.”

Curiopedia

Indian Railways is India’s national railway system operated by the Ministry of Railways. It manages the fourth largest railway network in the world by size, with a route length of 67,368-kilometre and total track length of 121,407-kilometre as of March 2017. As of March 2017, Indian Railway’s rolling stock consisted of 277,987 freight wagons, 70,937 passenger coaches and 11,452 locomotives. The world’s eighth-largest employer, it had 1.30 million employees as of March 2016. In the year ending March 2018, IR carried 8.26 billion passengers and transported 1.16 billion tonnes of freight. More Info

Curated Coverage

1. DNA – Cabinet nod to organisational restructuring of Indian Railways, central service IRMS to be created 

2. Business Standard – Govt breaks 150-year tradition, gives nod to restructuring of Railway board

#IndianRailways #Infrastructure #IRCTC