CAT bench issues stay order on Railway Board appointment

Stay order over appointment of Member Traffic

The Bangalore bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has issued a stay order on the ongoing process of appointing a Member (Traffic) on the Railway Board.

The order came on Wednesday after N C Sinha, chief operating manager, South Western Railway, petitioned it to say he was senior enough to be considered for the job.

Sources said he’d averred that he was, despite his seniority, not promoted as a general manager, stopping him from being considered for the Member (Traffic) post.

Sinha is from the 1975 batch of the Indian Railway Traffic Service. Sources say D P Pandey, from a junior batch, was being considered for the said job.

It appears a complaint had been filed against Sinha in early 2012. The railways filed a closure report, which the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) rejected, after which the railways had issued a charge sheet. Later, Sinha was exonerated of all the charges, with a note of disagreement from the CVC. Since then, promotions for Sinha had been frozen.

The next hearing is scheduled on July 23. By then, the ministry would have to present its reasons for continuing the appointment process. The official response from Rail Bhavan has been limited to calling the matter sub judice, due to which they cannot comment.

This comes in the backdrop of the cash-for-posts bribery scandal for Railway Board appointments, which had led to the resignation of Pawan Kumar Bansal as minister. At present, the names for full-time appointments for the board’s chairman, member (staff) and finance commissioner are also yet to be finalised. Arunendra Kumar, has been given additional charge as chairman, along with his existing responsibility as member (mechanical).

Kul Bhushan, the member (electrical) has been handling the additional charge of member (traffic).