1. Organizational Restructuring of Indian Railways approved by Cabinet on 24th Dec 2019.
2. All new recruits in railways will be inducted through the UPSC civil services exams under five specialties, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav said on Thursday, days after the Cabinet approved the merger of its eight services into one — the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS).
3. Unification of eight existing services of Indian Railways for Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) will be done at all levels i.e. from Junior Scale to HAG+. However, modalities for unification and assignment of inter seniority will be decided by Alternative Mechanisms. For this, the Ministry of Railways and DOPT will together to work out the necessary formula before it is taken up by Alternative Mechanism. It will be ensured that no one will be at a disadvantage.
4. 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. In the cabinet note approved, it has been mentioned that officers of IRMS (constituted by 8 services) only will be eligible to become the Functional Members and Chairman/CEO of Railway Board. The number of Independent members will be decided by the Government. They will be non-Executive Members and will attend the Board meetings. They will not be involved in the day-to-day functioning of Railways. Their experience of market and field will help in the strategic planning of Indian Railways.
5. Efforts will be made to complete the unification at the earliest. Officers will continue doing the work which they were doing at present. Domain knowledge will be taken into consideration while deciding a posting. Future recruits to IRMS will be made through UPSC (Civil Services) in consultation with UPSC and DOPT.
6. The reforms as suggested by various committees from time to time including Prakash Tandon Committee (1994) have been largely adopted. The decision for unification was taken based on the sentiments and suggestions of all levels of officers during “Parivartan Sangosthi” held on 07th & 08th December 2019 at New Delhi. These were also suggested by all groups constituted under GMs during Parivartan Sangosthi. The suggestions were unanimously agreed to by the Railway Board.
7. On Thursday, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav told news agency PTI, “Just like aspirants to the Union Public Service Commission, candidates aspiring to get into railways will have to appear for their prelims after which they will indicate their preference for IRMS under five specialties — four of them engineering specialties for ”technical” operations comprising of civil, mechanical, telecom and electrical, and one ”non-technical” specialty which will recruit officers for accounts, personnel, and traffic.”
8. For the restructuring of Railways, the merger of 8 railway departments (IRTS, IRPS, IRAS, IRSE, IRSME, IRSEE, IRSSE &IRSS ) will be done.
9. These are recruited through the Civil Services Examination (CSE ) & Engineering Services Examination (ESE ).
All the 8 departments will now be merged into a single department which will be known as Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS ).
10. Currently, UPSC conducts recruitment to Indian Railway Traffic Service, Indian Railway Accounts Service, Indian Railway Personnel Service through Civil Services exam and Indian Railway Service of Engineers, Indian Railway Stores Service (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Telecommunication/Electronics Engineering Posts), Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers, Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers, Indian Railway Service of Signal Engineers through Combined Engineering Services exam.
11. This merger aims to eliminate the departmentalism problem in railways and will result in speedy and smoothly implementation of new initiatives of railways.
12. Now Engineering Servants will also be able to reach Secretary level posts, which earlier were mostly occupied by Civil Servants. Now Engineering Servants (Recruited through ESE) & Civil Servants (Recruited through CSE ) will have the same department(IRMS ) and same powers
13. UPSC is yet to clarify the recruitment mechanism of IRMS (Group A Services ).