Organisational Restructuring of the Indian Railways 04/01/2020 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags:

Restructuring of Railways

 

For: Preliminary & Mains

Topics covered:

  • About Organisational restructuring of Railways
  • About Indian Railways Management Service

 

News Flash

The government has decided to trim the Railway Board, and merge service cadres of Railways officers into a single Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS).

 

Key Highlights

  • Railway Board, which governs the Indian Railways, will now have only five Members instead of nine.
  • The five members of the Board, other than a Chairman-cum-CEO, will now be the Members Infrastructure, Finance, Rolling Stock, Track, and Operations and Business Development.
  • The Board will also have independent Members, who will be industry experts with at least 30 years of experience, but in non-executive roles, only attending Board meetings.

 

Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS)

  • Cabinet has approved the merger of its eight services into one — the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS).
  • This is in line with the recommendations of numerous committees, notably Rakesh Mohan (2001) and the Bibek Debroy panel (2015).
  • 27 posts of GMs have been upgraded to apex grade. It will be ensured that eligible officers of all the erstwhile services get apex grade post of GM.
  • The officers of IRMS (constituted by 8 services) only will be eligible to become the Functional Members and Chairman/CEO of Railway Board.
  • Independent members will be non- Executive Members and will attend the Board meetings. They will not be involved in day-to-day functioning of Railways.
  • Future recruits to IRMS will be made through UPSC(Civil Services) in consultation with UPSC and DOPT.

 

Why was the reform needed?

  • The government wants to end inter-departmental rivalries. Several committees including the Bibek Debroy committee in 2015 have noted that “departmentalism” is a major problem in the system.
  • The Debroy report recommended merging of all services to create two distinct services: Technical and Logistics. A separate exam under the Union Public Service Commission is proposed to be instituted in 2021 to induct IRMS officers.

 

Source: Indian Express

 

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