Piyush Goyal ‘less than wise’, Railway Board members ‘blind’ says OSD

The Railway Board Secretary has sought repatriation of an OSD working in the PMO for ‘ breach of official decorum and misconduct’.

The communication sent to the DoPT reads:

“ A case of breach of official decorum and misconduct of Sanjiv Kumar, IRPS, has been brought to the notice of the Railway Board. Sanjiv Kumar has authored an article in railsamachar.com …the article besides being in bad taste, questions the wisdom of senior functionaries of the level of Secretary to the Government of India and also casts aspersions on the Minister of Railways (Piyush Goyal)…”

The Railway Board Secretary has urged DoPT Secretary C. Chandramouli to immediately repatriate the officer to the Railways so that appropriate action can be initiated against him. Sanjiv Kumar, an officer of the Indian Railways Personnel Service, has been working on deputation as OSD to the DoPT minister Jitendra Singh at the PMO.

Drawing a parallel, the IRPS officer says in the article that the six members of the Railway Board, who are drawn from six different divisions of the Indian Railways, have little comprehension of the Railways in its entirety, that each Member gets busy promoting his own tribal instincts and the interests of the particular division that he served in the Railways.

Successive chairmen of the Railway Board, Kumar writes, have successfully misled Railway Ministers and that is why Indian Railways have failed to perform. “ At the time of independence, China was way behind India in terms of Railways but today Chinese trains are exceeding the speed of 300 Kms per hour whereas Indian Railways continues to hold trial runs for trains with a high speed of 180 Kms.”

The officer laments that despite the existence of a specialised Indian Railway personnel Service, Member ( Personnel) of the Railway Board has generally been drawn from other wings.

He also wonders why the Indian Railway failed to implement the recommendations of the Bibek Debroy Committee, which had recommended merging the eight current services in the Railways into two consolidated services.

The article claims that Railway employees have to maintain their offices and even official quarters at their own expense. With no heed paid to the pension woes of the employees, the commitment of Railway employees to the India Railway has gone down in recent times, it says.

It appears to ridicule Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and cites an interview he gave to a TV channel, in which the minister claimed that he had found the solution to all the problems the Indian Railway suffered from.

The article concludes by saying that the time has come to appoint Railway Board chairmen from outside. Why can’t the Government appoint people like Nandan Nilekani or Sundar Pichai as Railway Board chairmen, it asks and points out that way back in 1901, British rulers had appointed a Railway Guard as Member of the Railway Board.

While the article has caused a stir in Railway circles, the officer appears to have waded into trouble.

With inputs from PTI