Railway Minister orders ministry officials to work in 2 shifts from 7am to 12am

New Delhi: Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw ordered officials and staffers in his office to work in two shifts to keep pace with him. The first shift will start at 7am, an order by his office said hours after he took charge on Thursday.

“Hon’ble MR (Minister of Railways) has directed that all the officers and staff of MR Cell will work in two shifts i.e. 7:00 hrs-16:00 hrs and 15:00 hrs -12:00 midnight with immediate effect,” the order said, formalising nine-hour shifts in his office.

The 50-year-old bureaucrat-turned-politician from Odisha was inducted into the cabinet in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet reshuffle exercise nearly two years after he was elected to the Rajya Sabha on a Bharatiya Janata Party ticket.

Vaishnaw, who is known to work till midnight, was allocated the ministry of railways, the ministry of communications, and the ministry of electronics and information technology.

“There are lots of synergies in the three and I will be working to ensure that his (PM Modi’s) vision is implemented,” Vaishnaw told reporters as he took charge.

Vaishnaw, an engineer by training, worked as an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer for over 15 years after getting masters degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur). He later went to Wharton University in the USA to pursue an MBA and after some time after completing the course quit government service so that he could quickly pay off the loans.

On his return, after working for top firms, he set up his own automotive components manufacturing units in Gujarat and at one point, even lived out of a container “as I wanted that factory to come out in record time”, he told HT in 2019.