New Delhi: With the Modi government having decided to merge all eight existing rail services into a single Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS), the UPSC will now be holding an exclusive railway service exam, ThePrint has learnt.
The exclusive UPSC exam for the new Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) will be first conducted in 2021.
This year’s UPSC exam will follow the earlier pattern — in which officers for the Indian Railway Accounts Service, Indian Railway Traffic Service, Indian Railway and the Indian Railway Personnel Service will be recruited through the Civil Services Exam (CSE), while those for the other services will be recruited through the Indian Engineering Service (IES) exam.
From next year onwards, however, there will be a common preliminary exam for the railway service but the main exam for engineers will be on their specialised domain expertise and not general studies, an official said on condition of anonymity.
“It would follow the Indian Forest Service (IFS) exam pattern,” the official said. “IFS officers have the same preliminary exam as IAS, IPS among others but have a specialised mains paper exclusively designed for them.”
UPSC will be intimated about the number of officers needed in the IRMS from 2021 onwards.
Senior UPSC officials, however, said the commission has received no such proposal.
“The government will decide how to go about it…We have not been informed or asked about anything yet,” an official said.
The commission also has no knowledge of whether the new IRMS will be considered a civil service or not.
Also read: All you want to know about the 8 railway services set to be merged, and the role they play
DoPT not consulted before Railways service merger
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which is the coordinating agency for all personnel matters, was not consulted by the Modi government before the controversial merger, ThePrint has learnt.
The DoPT looks after recruitment, regulation of service conditions, postings and transfers, deputation and training of civil servants, and comes directly under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
“They announced that they would consult the DoPT and UPSC after making the announcement,” said a DoPT official. “But despite the fact that the DoPT is the nodal agency for these matters, it was not consulted before the announcement was made.”
Officials are foreseeing a lot of problems in unifying the existing cadres of the eight services as well. “There will be issues of promotion, seniority, among others. All those need to be reconciled,” the official added.
As reported by ThePrint earlier, the government is going to constitute a Group of Ministers to sort out all the matters arising from the decision.
Also read: Arbitrary, betrayal — officers outrage over Modi govt move to merge railway services
How can civil services and Engineers have same prelim and will the irms syllabus for engineers will be same as ese or will it change ?
It was my suggestion to merge all eight Services of Group A Services including 3 non-technical IRTS, IRPS and IRAAS to Dr. Debroy Committee on Reforms of Indian Railways.
This is a very overdue step. During the tenure of Sree Shuresh Prabhu, then Minister of Railways, this proposal got Full Board approval.
I welcome. All candidates should be Engineers and then will be trained in specialized Branches.
In specialized engineering exam , all engineering subjects must be allowed.
They must separate IPS (Indian Police Service) examination conduct too. IPS is very diverse service in itself which requires completely different enthusiasm and spirit for it. It shouldn’t be like one wasn’t able to make it into IAS so he/she should go for second choice as IPS.
I believe sooner or later comission have to conduct separate examinations for various different specialized services and even generalist services.
I am success full confidence
Good decision.