Merging the cadres will kill specialization in Railways, and adversely affect safety of passengers & train operations

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Cadre merger decision not unanimous, will create ‘conflict of interest’ -IRTS officers

A letter jointly written by the service associations of IRTS, IRPS and IRAS officers says that the move to merge the cadres will kill ‘specialization’ in Railways

This comes on a day when Chairman Railway Board V K Yadav spent almost all day meeting separately various service associations, especially the three services who have been protesting the cadre merger move

In an official letter to the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister P K Mishra, the civil servants of Railways have demanded that the Cabinet decision to merge all eight cadres into one be not effected as it was taken without ‘credible process of obtaining consensus’, contrary to what is being officially said that this was a unanimous(?) decision.

The letter, jointly written by the service associations of Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS) and Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) officers, says that the move to make an Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) by merging the cadres will ‘create situations of conflicts of interest’, kill ‘specialization’ in Railways, and adversely affect safety of train operations.

In the representation to the PMO, the three railway services have sought two services instead of one—separating the engineers from the civil servants– and have urged that a Railway Board Member (Human Resources) post be restored for the Indian Railway Personnel Service since managing the resources of 13 lakh railway employees is a full-time, specialised job the IRPS is trained to do.

They have said that many officers of the civil services had actually quit the Railway Engineering services to appear for the civil services and become civil servants and lose two-three years of seniority.

The officers have written that they share the concern of the PMO over the ‘lack of perceptible progress in projects and reforms such as production of Train-18 trainsets, network expansion, PPP initiatives, structural changes in production units’ etc. The letter says that the recent cadre-merger move will not work to solve these problems.

While requesting wider consultation before the move is implemented, the letter to the PMO says that the organisation needs to revise the way it appoints officers to the higher administrative posts of DRM, GM and Board members.

This comes on a day when Chairman Railway Board V K Yadav spent almost all day meeting separately to various service associations, especially the three services who have been protesting the cadre merger move.

According to officers who attended those meetings, Yadav assured them that the modalities of the merger have not yet been finalized and serving officers might get an option to either join the new IRMS or remain in their present service.

He has apparently also assured the representatives of the associations that details of the cadre-merger proposal would be shared with the associations for wider consultations and inputs.

In the meeting, some officers also told Yadav that the move would not pass legal scrutiny since this was tantamount to violating the service conditions of the existing services, sources said.

Yadav is scheduled to meet other service specific associations on Wednesday on the same issue.

Really, it’s very sad that such spineless persons are leading this organisation nowadays, said the officers. Why CRB meet each and every cadre association separately, is this because he has no courage to meet collectively with every cadre association, they question.

Output of the meeting with CRB

The office bearers of IRTS Association had a detailed meeting with the Chairman/Railway Board today. It was conveyed by CRB that the proposal approved by Cabinet had 4 major parts viz. (a) Restructuring of Board with CEO and 4 Members + DG/HR + DG(Safety), (b) Grant of apex level to GMs, (c) Future recruitment to IRMS through Civil Services Examination and (d) merger of 8 organized services.

  1. He clarified while Cabinet has given clear approval for the first three issues, the modalities for the merger are to be separately considered by CoS & GoM.

  2. On being specifically asked about the contours of proposed merger of services, it was informed that nothing yet has been finalized and the draft proposals will be discussed with all the services before moving ahead.

  3. It was also indicated that since it is not legally possible to force any officer to join the new IRMS, some sort of optional scheme is being worked out. However, the modalities of this have also not been worked out in details.

  4. The issue of age difference of recruits through Civil Services vis-a-vis ESE was strongly conveyed to CRB.

  5. It was finally requested by the Association that the details of the cadre merger may be shared so that same can be examined and response conveyed.