RRB South Coast Railway Zone: No separate zone now

New Delhi, June 22: Railway Minister Piyush Goyal ruled out a separate recruitment board or divisional headquarters for now for the newly created South Coast Railway Zone, stating that all issues regarding it will be addressed in due course.

Responding to a question in Rajya Sabha, Goyal said that there are 21 Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) across the country for catering to the recruitment requirements of various categories of Group 'C' posts of zonal railways.

"Visakhapatnam area is catered adequately by RRB/Secunderabad," he said.

Goyal had announced the formation of the new railway zone, SCoR with Visakhapatnam as its headquarters in February this year comprising Vijaywada, Guntur and Guntakal rail divisions, besides a section of the Waltair rail division.

Goyal also said that it was not a convention that the place having zonal headquarter must also have a divisional headquarter.

Giving examples of zonal headquarters of Northeast Frontier Railway (Maligaon), South Eastern Railway (Kolkata), East Coastal Railway (Bhubaneswar), North Eastern Railway (Gorakhpur) and East Central Railway (Hajipur), he said that these do not have respective Divisional Headquarters.

"The decision of the Ministry of Railways, for setting up a new Zone with headquarter at Visakhapatnam, has been taken after due consideration taking all relevant factors into account. All administrative issues arising out of this reorganization will be dealt with in due course in order to ensure smooth functioning of the new zone," he said.

The new zone is expected to be operational in a year's time, officials said.