New appraisal system for GMs appointment in railways

Railway officers are inducted in eight cadres which include civil engineering, mechanical, electrical, stores, signalling, traffic, personnel and account services.

NEW DELHI: Hoping to bring in a dynamic and rewarding system for senior railway officials to perform consistently, the railway ministry has now decided to adopt a comprehensive appraisal system for appointing General Managers in 17 railways zones so that best of the brains get the top railway jobs.

The new system, which has come into effect from this financial year, will ensure there is a transparent and independent evaluation of work of candidates appointed to GM posts or other top posts in railway board.

The change that has been brought in assessment is that a wider departmental promotion committee will assess a candidate based on his/her entire career rather than just depending on reports submitted by seniors in form of annual confidential report (ACR).

“Earlier, the confidential report column had four-five different kinds of eligibility criteria that a candidate is suitable for following things, thus leaving other aspects. Now that part has been done away with, the departmental promotion committee will make an assessment and they will see the entire career and they will decide appointments based on that,” said a senior officer in Railway Board, who has been part of the exercise that is being rolled out.

The officer said that until now a senior writing ACR for his subordinate was doing assessment, now a wider departmental committee will see if a candidate is fit or not fit and if fit then in what areas he/she specializes. So now, some kind of independent perspective will come for appointing GMs,” the officer added.  

The new system was necessitated as it was found that certain officers not having interest or ability were appointed to top posts. Railway hopes that the present system will ensure a transparent method of appointment.     

Earlier, to motivate its cadre to perform better, Railway Board had tweaked rules to ensure equal representation from all eight railway services for appointment of 17 General Managers irrespective of age or seniority.

Railway officers are inducted in eight cadres which include civil engineering, mechanical, electrical, stores, signalling, traffic, personnel and account services. There is lot of rivalry among these services and to end this, there were also plans to merge cadres to two technical and non-technical but that has not happened.

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