The Railway Board, Minister Piyush Goyal and his private sector expert adviser are an unhappy lot. Because Sanjiv Kumar, a 2005-batch officer of the Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS) and currently posted as the official on special duty (OSD) to the Minister of State for DoPT, Jitendra Singh, has questioned the competence and integrity of the top railway management in an article on the website  nationalwheels.com. This has provoked the Ministry.

In a letter addressed to the secretary of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) dated December 28, 2018, Railway Board secretary Ranjanesh Sahai has sought the “immediate repatriation of Shri Sanjiv Kumar, IRPS”, so that the railway ministry can take “such action as deemed appropriate”.

 

Kumar wrote in the article: "After 13 years of Indian Railway Personnel Services, I can say with certainty that in these years, no officer has done anything for the development of human resources of Indian Railways except for a few exceptions...Good efforts in the area have, in fact, been prevented.”

 

Kumar has also gone on to compare the six members on the board with the six men in the story of the blind men and an elephant, who consider what they believe to be the ultimate truth.

 

In his letter seeking Kumar’s repatriation, Sahai has written that the article is “in bad taste, questions the wisdom of senior functionaries of the level of secretary to the government of India and also casts aspersions on the Hon’ble Minister of Railways”.

“In view of the violation of Rule 9 of the Railway Services (Conduct) Rules, 1966, it is proposed to take up the officer under the Railway Servants (Discipline & Appeal) Rules, 1968,” the letter adds. “You would appreciate that misconduct of this nature and that too in the public domain would send a wrong message all around and encourage indiscipline in the service.”

 

According to Rule 9, a railway officer must not publicly criticise or embarrass the state or central government.