Railway Board reforms panel may push for decentralisation

The all-day meeting will see a discussion on the terms of reference and a division of subgroups within the committee to carry out various stakeholder meeting in the coming months. A half-day meeting is scheduled on Saturday as well.

“While meeting the various federations and unions, the entire committee should ideally be present, but for other meetings at zonal and division levels, the entire committee will not be present everywhere, so we will have subgroups of two or three,” he said.

Debroy said the effort is to come up with a draft report of recommendations in six months which will invite comments from everyone from stakeholders to general public. “We will recommend changes in the Railway Act and the Railway Board Act. We will point out the necessary changes, while the job of drafting the amendments is something the government will do,” he said.

There is a prevailing concern within the Railway bureaucracy that railwaymen have not been adequately represented in the panel. “We do not need people to be on the panel to interact with them. Let me assure you, we will interact with all stakeholders adequately,” he said.

The Railway Board is staring at a season high-level vacancies and a bit of crisis in its high-level promotions process.

Its post of Member Electrical is lying vacant since August and has finally gone for vigilance clearance after so much dilly dallying even though there is a serving general manager, who has been perfectly eligible to take over since the vacancy opened up.

In November Member Mechanical Aloke Johri will retire followed by Chairman Railway Board Arunendra Kumar. January will see Member Traffice DP Pande superannuate.

Problem with the Railways right now is that it is finding it difficult to fill Member-level vacancies because its rules of making General Managers are under the scanner of the PMO. The PMO returned its latest proposal of GM empanelment at least thrice with queries, replies to which have not been satisfactory to the PMO.