Railway Minister Piyush Goyal fast-tracks merger of railway services

With the government setting November as the deadline for complete merger of various railway services into one common Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has been holding a meeting with associations of different services to fast-track the process.

The Minister has been meeting office-bearers of various cadres to address their concerns and convince them about the urgent need to merge the services to improve the efficiency of the national transporter.

With some of the services associations opposing the merger proposal, the Minister was trying to clear their doubts on their future role in the Indian Railways including promotion opportunities once merger completes, sources in railways said.

In his meeting with representatives of associations, the Minister was learnt to have conveyed that the government was planning a uniform promotion for all services till higher administrative grade (HAG) based on best performing service in the grade for Senior Administrative Grade (SAG).

In future recruitment of IRMS would be through UPSC civil service exam while posts requiring technical expertise like those in the Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO) will be filled up by a different process, the minister informed the associations.

The Minister also assured that performance is also one of the key criteria for promotion in future in the national transporter.

In December 2019, the Union Cabinet approved the restructuring of the national carrier by trimming the Railway Board’s strength to --half -- from eight to four -- and unifying its eight railway services into single central service IRMS.

The Ministry hired consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to finalise the merger modalities.

The eight services will be merged include the Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), and Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS) ( all are national transporter's civil services). The remaining five are technical or engineering services.

However civil services officers opposed to the merger with the technical services. The technical services officers have recruited on the basis of the Indian Engineering Services (IES) exam, conducted by the UPSC.

At present, civil services officers get promotions faster than those belonging to the engineering services. Once the merger completes, uniform promotion policy will be introduced by stopping differential promotions system.

Earlier civil services officers associations also submitted a joint memorandum to the government opposing the merger.