Daisy
Patna : Former East Central Railway (ECR), Hajipur, Bihar, GM A K Mittal, who was elevated to the post of member ( engineering), Railway Board, New Delhi, joined his new assignment on Wednesday. He was the sixth or seventh ECR GM made Railway Board member. Prior to him R L Varshney, S K Viz , K K Srivastava and a few others had an opportunity to be elevated to the post of Member, Railway Board, sources said.
The ECR, which came into existence in 2002, had also the proud privilege of seeing three of its GM promoted to the coveted post of Chairman, Railway Board. They were: IIMS Rana , J P Batra and K C Jena . While Rana who was the founder ECR GM , became the Board chairman in 2002 , J P Batra was elevated to the post of the Board chairman in 2005. The ECR had got maximum projects sanctioned during the period of Batra while Lalu Prasad was the railway minister, sources said adding K C Jena served as the Board chairman in 2007 .
According to sources , Rana also served as Danapur DRM before he joined as GM of the newly created ECR zone in October 2002 . In fact, the ground work for development of railway network in Bihar started during his period as chairman. But, Bihar got the nomenclature of the ‘ hub’ of Indian Railways when Batra and Jena got sanctioned and expedited execution of various pending projects in Bihar, sources said adding the tenure of former railway minister Nitish Kumar is described in the railway parlance for starting its modernization and passengers’ safety plan.