Railway Board shifts employees of electrification body CORE to various railway zones
The Railway Board has directed that employees of the Central Organization for Railway Electrification (CORE) be shifted to railway zones, citing that its present electrification assignment is ending and no new work has been allotted to it.
The CORE had electrified 58,812 route kilometers (RKM) of the Indian Railway’s broad-gauge network by March 31, 2023, which is 90 per cent of the total network (65,300 RKM).
The present electrification assignment to the CORE is coming to an end and no new work has been allotted to it, the board’s office memorandum dated September 11, 2023, stated. ”The Ministry of Railways is upgrading track electrification for high speed trains and for that it has approved 2×25 kV electric traction upgrade work, but somewhere I believe that the board is of the view that there is no need to continue with CORE for this project and it can be done by the respective zones,” a source in the railways said.
The board’s direction stated that the magnitude of 2×25 kV electric traction upgrade is quite huge and it has been decided that this work will be executed by the zonal railway through projects under chief electrical engineers.
Set-up in 1961 as the Project Office for Railway Electrification (PORE) with the mandate to electrify railway tracks, it emerged as a separate unit — CORE — due to the growing need to reduce the country’s dependence on petroleum-based energy by rapid electrification of tracks.
The CORE has nine departments out of which one was merged with the Northeast Frontier Railway two months back. Now, the remaining departments have been shifted to other railway zones.
CORE’s Kolkata and Lucknow units have been transferred to the North Eastern Railway, the South Eastern Railway and the Northern Railway while its Bangalore and Ahmedabad units have been shifted to the Central Railway, the South Western Railway, the Western Railway and the West Central Railway.
While employees of CORE’s headquarter have been sent to the South Central Railway, the East Coast Railway, the Southern Railway, the North Western Railway and the Northern Railway, its remaining offices at Secunderabad, Chennai and Jaipur and Ambala have been shifted to the North Central Railway, the West Central Railway and the South East Central Railway.
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