The Hindu : R.K. Singh, new Railway Board chief

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 01, 2003

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National

R.K. Singh, new Railway Board chief

By Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI JUNE 30. The Northern Railway General Manager, R.K. Singh, was today appointed Chairman of the Railway Board. He becomes perhaps the first General Manager to be appointed straight as the Chairman without even having served as a member of the Board.

The order elevating Mr. Singh to the post of CRB states: "The above appointment order is subject to the final outcome of Original Appeal No. 1507/2003 filed in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Principal Bench, New Delhi." The Principal Bench of CAT has fixed July 17 as the next date of hearing in the appeal filed by an official whose seniority like that of 14 other officials, including three Board members, has been overlooked while appointing Mr. Singh as the Railway Board Chairman.

Informed sources say that there is no "open line" General Manager who has a balance tenure of service of two years or more on the date of occurrence of the vacancy. The two seniormost General Managers — S.P.S. Jain of the Central Railway has 20 months of residual service and S.M. Singla has 16 months. On the other hand, if the Minister decides to give more weightage to a fixed two-year tenure, then P.N. Garg (GM, East Central Railway), Pramod Kumar (GM, South East Central) and R.S. Varshney (G.M. East Central) should become Board members. These distortions will continue to plague the Ministry and that was the reason why the seniormost Board member was appointed as the CRB, sources said.

However, the other view in the Ministry is that the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar solidly backed Mr. Singh, sending a signal that seniority would not be the sole and automatic criteria for elevation. Incidentally, the Prime Minister's approval for Mr. Singh's appointment came today.

At the brief ceremony at the Railway Bhavan where Mr. Singh took charge as the new CRB from Mr. I.I.M.S. Rana, he was asked for comments on the controversy surrounding his appointment. ''We will work as a solid one team. I would not like to comment on the controversy. Even as the Northern Railway General Manager, there were five officials senior to me working under me. The proposal for my appointment had emanated from the Railway Ministry, I would not know anything about it,'' he said. Safety, customer satisfaction and checking leakages of funds would head the list of his priorities. His tenure will run till July 31, 2005.

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