The appointments committee of the cabinet (ACC) on Wednesday formally approved the restructuring of the Railway Board and approved the appointment of VK Yadav, the current chairman of the Railway Board as its first CEO.
In December 2019, the Union Cabinet in a move to reform the 150-year-old board of the Indian Railways, approved the restructuring of the apex body of the Indian Railways by cutting its strength to half, and unifying its eight services into a central service called the Indian Railway Management Service.
While Yadav has been appointed the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO); Pradeep Kumar has been appointed Member, Infrastructure; PC Sharma has been appointed Member, Traction and Rolling Stock; PS Mishara has been made Member, Operations and Business Development. Manjula Rangarajan has been appointed Member, Finance.
With this rearrangement, three apex level posts — Member (Staff), Member (Engineering) and Member (Materials Management) in the Railway Board have been suspended and the post of Member (Rolling Stock) has been utilised for creation of the post of Director General (HR) in apex grade as per Cabinet Decision, the ACC said.
Indian railways will now have only a five-member railway board that will act as “Chief Executive Officer (CEO)” along with four members responsible for Infrastructure, Operations & Business Development, Rolling Stock and Finance, respectively.
The Railway Board is the apex body of the Indian Railways which reports to the Parliament via the ministry of railways.
At present, the railway board includes eight members — member (rolling stock), member (traction), member (traffic), member (engineering), member (staff), member (material management), members (signal & telecom) and financial commissioner.
As per the new structure, the Chairman shall be the cadre controlling officer responsible for Human resources (HR) with assistance from a Director General level officer. 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.
