Govt breaks 150-year tradition, gives nod to restructuring of Railway board

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday gave approval to restructuring of the Railway board through merger of its existing eight Group A services into a central service called the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS). The new board will have a leaner structure on functional lines headed by the chairman and four members — covering infrastructure, operations and business development, rolling stock, and finance.

In addition, the board will also include sectoral experts from industry, finance, economics, and management fields. Moving in corporate lines, the chairman will now be called as chief executive officer. The government is seeing this as a