Relief of the railway employees in the event of a transfer request

Railway transfer request

Relief of the railway employees in the event of a transfer request

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS
(RAILWAY BOARD)

RB.No: 203/2019

No.E(NG)I/2019 /PM2/ 18CC

New Delhi, dated November 26-11-2019

The General Managers
All Zonal Railways & Production Units.
(as per srandard mailing list)

Sub: Relieving of Railway employees in time after order of transfer in cases of request transfer.

As the Railway administrations are aware, instructions already exist which provide that in cases of request transfer, the requests should be dealt with in an organized and expeditious manner so that there is no occasion for any grievance in the mind of the staff in regard to the handling of their request.

It has been observed that despite the existence of such instruction, due to administrative exigencies,it sometimes becomes difficult to relieve the transferred employee a within a reasonable time, which results in loss of seniority to the employee in his new place of posting. The loss is even greater when he goes to posts one grade below, and new recruits from subsequent batches join before him.

Also check: Comprehensive Transfer Policy – Exemption from 5 years service condition – Indian Railways – NFIR

The loss in seniority in such cases resulting from delayed relieving of the emproyee often leads to litigation, and structures passed by Hon’able Courts.

In one such case recently, the Hon’ble CAT/Chennai in OAs, No.751/2019 and other similar OAs, vide their common order dated 05.07.2019, inter-alia observed as under:

Since it is submitted by the applicants that IREC is silent on the above issue and accordingly there is a void in this regard in the policy, we deem it appropriate to direct the first respondent to consider the concerned raised in the OAs as a policy issue and take an appropriate decision on whether and if so, how the interests of such transferred employees should be protected in regard to their seniority at-least from the date from which they where approved for IRT, if they could not be relieved soon thereafter in public interest. Such policy decision may be taken and orders issued within a period of six month from the date of receipt of a copy of this order.”

The matter has accordingly been considered in the Board. while it may not be desirable / feasible to assign seniority to transferred employee of approval of in the new unit from the date of approval of the transfer, when the employees is still actually working in the parent unit, every effort should be made to relieve her/him at an early date. Where delay in relieving of the employees after orders are issued exceeds is likely to exceed 3 months, the case should be put up by Sr.DPO/ WPO to DRM/ CWM as the case may be giving specific reasons for the delay and likely date of relief.

Please acknowledge receipt.

(D.Joseph)
Railway Board

Source: NFIR