 "Rly Board gets first woman CEO, Jaya Varma Sinha to take charge from Sep 1")
Jaya Varma Sinha is set to become the first woman chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Railway Board.
She will succeed Anil Kumar Lahoti, who retired on Thursday.
Sinha is currently working as the member (Operations & Business Development) of the apex railway body.
"The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Jaya Verma Sinha, Indian Railway Management Services (IRMS), Member (Operations & Business Development), Railway Board to the post of chairman and chief executive officer, Railway Board," a Department of Personnel and Training order said.
Her tenure is set to begin from Friday (September 1), and will continue till October, following which she will be re-employed as the chairman and CEO till August 2024.
Prior to her current assignment, she was an additional member (Traffic Transportation) at the Railway Board.
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Sinha was the official holding fort at Rail Bhawan in New Delhi, when Lahoti and the Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw were in Odisha following the tragic Balasore train accident that claimed nearly 300 lives.
Sinha was briefing the media on the developments in the train accident, while simultaneously operating a war room in the ministry premises to oversee operations in and around the site of the accident.
Sinha takes over the reins at a time when questions of safety loom large over the national transporter following the Balasore triple-train accident, the deadliest rail mishap in over three decades.
Sinha is tasked with an ambitious freight loading target of 2,000 million tonnes (mt) in the coming years for the national transporter, and an aggressive Vande Bharat rollout pipeline ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
She will also be looking at the absorption of record capital expenditure allocation of Rs 2.4 trillion in 2023-24.
Sinha is an alumna of Allahabad University. She joined the Indian Railway Traffic Service in 1988.
Incidentally, the Maitri Express, the first international, express train service connecting Dhaka to Kolkata, was inaugurated during her tenure as the railways advisor in the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh.