Though the two seem unrelated, senior officials in the Indian Railways (IR) fear that the recommendations of the panel may lead to their fears coming true. For, the panel keeps the gangmen and gatekeepers of the railway level crossings (LCs) in the same slab and no one is willing to become gatekeepers.

Hitherto, gatekeeper used to get special pay and higher salary. Despite this, gangmen were reluctant to go as gatekeepers because of high job complexities. IR could not do much as gangman is the feeder cadre for gatekeepers. There is a ban on recruiting gatekeepers directly from outside but now they are thinking on those lines.

There is huge vacancy among gangmen itself – 40,000 posts are vacant out of the three lakh posts.

All these have resulted in the increase of accidents: the IR told the Parliamentary standing committee on railways recently that the number of accidents at unmanned level crossings (ULCs) has increased to 37 per cent in 2006-07, when compared to 15 per cent in 2000-01. There are 18,200 ULCs at present on IR.

Even manning the ULCs has been going slow because of various reasons. The IR set a target of 447 manned LCs for 2007-08 but till February 2008, only 179 are completed.

There were three reasons for this: Delay in finalisation of recruitment process of gangmen to man the unmanned level crossings, delay in finalisation of tenders due to lack of response and high rates, and delay in obtaining approval of the Commissioner of Railway Safety for manning of ULCs. The recruitment process for gangmen has been chaotic to say the least, say IR officials, ever since their appointment was thrown open and zonal railways were asked to recruit them like the UPSC. “For one gangman post in zonal railways, there are three-four lakh applicants and as a result, it is becoming difficult to conduct recruitment process. IR is now organising these recruitment in a proper manner”, officials told the committee.