Maligaon, February 18 (MExN): Ashish Bansal, a 1989-batch officer of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), has taken over as General Manager of the Northeast Frontier Railway (Construction), an official NFR update informed.
Prior to this, he served as Principal Executive Director (Track Modernisation and Machines) in the Ministry of Railways from March 2023. As General Manager, he will oversee all railway construction activities under the jurisdiction of NF Railway, covering the northeastern states, Sikkim and parts of West Bengal and Bihar.
Bansal joined the Indian Railway Service in January 1991 and has held key assignments across railway zones, the Railway Board, RDSO and DMRC, with experience in track maintenance, policy formulation, bridge engineering and metro construction.
He also served as Divisional Railway Manager of Dhanbad Division under East Central Railway, which recorded the highest freight loading and earnings among all Indian Railways divisions during his tenure. He has additionally held charge as Chairman and Managing Director of IRCON International Limited.
At RDSO’s Track Machines Directorate, he oversaw track recording systems, operationalised a high-speed track recording car imported from the US and commissioned two more such cars, besides authoring reports on the use of track recording data for maintenance planning. As Chief Track Engineer of Northern Railway, he was involved in maintaining about 10,000 km of track network along with renewal works.
As PED (Track Modernisation and Machines), he led initiatives to expand the track machine fleet to handle higher axle loads and traffic, introduced a structured rail grinding programme to improve track performance, and finalised a policy for adopting an indigenous modern fastening system for future 25-tonne axle load and higher-speed operations.
He also laid the foundation for precision manufacturing in PSC sleeper production through automated carousel-based closed-loop systems. During the past two years, orders for 695 track machines were placed, while procurement of another 680 machines is under way to enhance track reliability.
