For the first time in the history of Indian Railways, a CEO has been appointed for the Railway Board! Recently, the current chairman of the Railway Board VK Yadav was appointed as the CEO and the decision has been approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. With this, Yadav became the first one to hold such a post in the history of the national transporter. Earlier, as part of large scale reforms initiated by Indian Railways, the Cabinet approved the Railway Board’s restructuring, whose strength has been cut from eight to five. While the Railway Board Chairman has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the Cabinet has appointed PC Sharma as Member, Traction and Rolling Stock, Pradeep Kumar as Member, Infrastructure, PS Mishara as Member, Operations and Business Development, and Manjula Rangarajan as Member, Finance, according to a PTI report.
As per the Cabinet’s Decision, with this rearrangement, three apex level posts in the Railway Board – Member (Engineering), Member (Staff), and Member (Materials Management), have been surrendered. For the creation of the post of Director General (HR) in apex grade, the post of Member (Rolling Stock) has been utilized, according to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. As per the plan chalked out by the national transporter, the cadre controlling officer- the chairman and CEO, will be responsible for Human Resources with assistance from a DG (Human Resouces).
According to the report, the Indian Railway Medical Service will be renamed. It will be called as the Indian Railway Health Service. Meanwhile, the merging of eight Indian Railways-related wings into a single central service is also underway, which will be known as the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS). According to the national transporter, these reforms will end departmentalism, expedite decision making, promote smooth working of Indian Railways, create a coherent vision for the organization as well as promote rational decision making.