New Delhi, Sep 3 (IANS): Almost nine months after the Union Cabinet approved the organisational restructuring of the Indian Railways, including the merger of eight Group A services to end departmentalism, promote smooth working and expedite decision-making, the government on Wednesday formally changed the Railway Board Members' designations.

In order, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, approving the decision of the Union Cabinet for re-organisation of railway board on functional lines, said that the Chairman of the Railway Board will be called the CEO.

Chairman, Railway Board V.K. Yadav will continue as the new CEO of the Indian Railways.

According to the government order, besides the CEO, the new Board will have four other Members with new designations.

The order said that new board members will include Member, Infrastructure (Pradeep Kumar, IRSEE), Member, Traction and Rolling Stock (P.C. Sharma, IRSS), Member, Operations and Business Development (P.S. Mishra, IRTS), and Member, Finance (Manjula Rangrajan, IRAS).

The order also said that three posts have been surrendered, which includes the post of Member, Staff, Engineering and Materials Management in Railway Board and utilisation of the post of Member, Rolling Stock, for creation of the post of Director General (HR) in apex grade as per the cabinet decision.

The Union Cabinet on December 24 last year approved the decision of organisational restructuring of Railways.

The decision was taken in a bid to revamp the Railway Board along functional lines to make it a leaner organisation.

The cabinet last year had approved the merger of eight Group A services into a central service called the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS).

Earlier, the Indian Railways was organised into departments such as traffic, civil, mechanical, electrical, signal & telecom, stores, personnel, and accounts. These departments were vertically separated and each headed by a Secretary-level officer (Member) in the Railway Board.