Railway officer suspended after senior gets late to attend marriage, reinstated
A senior railway official, travelling in a lavish saloon coach attached to the cargo train, ensured an officer was suspended on Friday, 11th November after he got stuck in a block resulting in his getting delayed to attend a colleague’s daughter’s marriage in Chhattisgarh.
In a turn of events, the suspension of assistant operations manager (control), Bilaspur, south east central railway (SECR) Shailesh Toppo was revoked by the principal chief operations manager on Saturday.
The letter of revocation of suspension, though issued on Saturday, had mentioned the order would come into effect from the previous day.
The high drama of questionable suspension had taken place after a block had ‘burst’ on Friday.
The block at Jharsuguda was supposed to take place between 10am and 12 noon for maintenance work of the overhead high tension work. It burst two hours before at 13.55pm.
Though the reason for overshooting the block schedule was not clear, it’s learnt that a senior railway official’s train had got stuck in it delaying his attendance in a marriage.
The official was coming from Kolkata. Infuriated by the delay, the official had called up a top ranking colleague from SECR narrating his grievance.
The SECR’s senior official had called up the divisional operational team and their supervisory level personnel urging them to place the concerned person under suspension.
As the “order” was not complied with on technical grounds, the SECR’s top officer started to mount pressure.
He wanted the officer suspended as his earlier instruction was not followed.
Assistant operations manager Toppo was placed under suspension after the SECR’s senior officer’s last instruction.
Upset over the suspension, a disappointed high-level official, too, had proceeded on leave.
As the drama unfolded in Bilaspur division, there was a widespread bitterness in the rank and file of the SECR zone.
Chief public relations officer Saket Ranjan of SECR said “the ‘block’ was routine work and the subsequent suspension order was an ‘internal’ administrative issue of the railways.”
Courtesy: m.timesofindia.com