Possibilities in respect of merger of certain Railway services
Specialization and Experience in any field is always prefers
Chapter-4: Gupta-Narain Committee recommendations
4.2 In response of our questionnaire and during the course of discussion, a number of suggestions for merger of some of the Group ‘A’ services on the Railways were received. Some of the important suggestions are discussed in the following paragraph-
4.2.1 Merger of all Engineering Services into one service and non- Engineering Services into second service.
4.2.2 This arrangement would retain the recruitment on the basis of the pre- determined disciplinary mix as at present Civil services examination and Engineering services examination of UPSC and yet reduce the seniority lists to two, one for civil services examination group and the other for Engineering services examination group (ref. para 3.5.2).
4.2.3 This arrangement would, however, suffer from the same problems relating to deployment within the engineering group and to erosion of different functional streams within the engineering group, which will be against the Scheme as envisaged in our Terms of Reference (ref. para 3.3.6) and will also be highly detrimental to the working of the Railways (ref. para 3.3.9).
As far as non-engineering group is concerned which comprises three services, IRTS, IRPS and IRAS, we feel that each of these have distinct and separate functions and combining them, resulting in the rotation of officers amongst various posts in these three services would militate against the discharge of proper functions in each of these.
Traffic officers are already required to gain experience in both Transportation and Commercial assignments and if Accounts and Personnel are also added to these it will effect the efficiency of all the three functions including the quality of output from the incumbents of certain operating posts on the Indian Railways which need a high degree of specialised personal skill and are highly sensitive from the point of view of the Indian Railways’ crucial role in many vital aspects of economy of the Country like the movement of bulk materials for industry and agriculture including, for example, the movement of coal to power houses.
4.2.3.1 Similarly, we feel that Accounts have a important and specialised role to perform in any democratic system of public accountability and thus should remain intact as a separate service.
4.2.3.2 In regard to the Personnel Branch, although there are pros and cons of these being manned on tenure basis by inducting officers of other services or by a specialized cadre, we feel that in the light of experience over the last few decades the present system which takes into account the specialization in the field of human resources development, personnel management and industrial relations, may continue and the IRPS which was introduced comparatively recently, may remain as a separate service.