Rail Merger of 8 Cadres Into IRMS Likely to be Completed by November This Year

The merger of eight major cadres of the Indian Railways into one single service -- the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) - is likely to be completed by November this year, officials said Thursday, adding that the national transporter has hired consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to finalise its modalities.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav held a meeting with representatives of various cadres and railway unions on Wednesday on the merging of the railway services, the officials said.

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 a central service.

During the meeting, the Railways informed the cadres that they were thinking of uniform promotion for all services till higher administrative grade (HAG) based on best performing service in the grade for Senior Administrative Grade (SAG).

It has also been conveyed that 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, said an official who attended the meeting.

We are targeting the merger to be completed before November. All the posts of merged cadre will be open for all members of IRMS. Fresh recruitment to IRMS will be done from UPSC civil service exam. Posts requiring technical expertise like those in RDSO will be filled up by different process like the way it is done in ISRO/DRDO, the official said.

They also said the formula for integrated seniority was still under discussion, but Yadav said during the meeting that some element of merit will be taken into account for key posts, not just seniority.

The merger services had earlier been proposed by various committees that studied ways of reforming the Indian Railways including the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and the Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).