Railways to use Aadhaar to mark employee attendance from 31 January

Indian Railways will be using biometric Aadhaar identification for registering attendance of its employees across the country, including all divisional and zonal offices, Metro Rail Kolkata, railways workshop, factories and production units, from 31 January next year.

Currently, the system is in place in the Railway Board and a few zonal headquarters. A letter from the board also states the biometric system should be integrated and implemented in such a way that it can be monitored by the divisional railway manager's office.

To move is aimed at weeding out the culture of coming late and the railway ministry will soon install Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system across its zones and divisions by 31 January next year.

"The plan is to put a check on the officials arriving late or not coming to work at all," PTI quoted a senior rail official as saying.

The Railway Board has also instructed that CCTV cameras be provided with the biometric machine.

"Once the Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system is installed across the railway zones and divisions by 31 January 2018, this problem can be addressed," the official added.

Meanwhile, Railways has revised its schedule and a new timetable has now been introduced. As per the new running time, travel time of some popular trains will reduce by 15 minutes to two hours from tomorrow.

Coupled with track and infrastructure upgrade, automatic signalling and the new Linke-Hofmann-Busch coaches that allow a 130 kmph top speed, trains are expected to run faster.

Following directions from railway minister Piyush Goyal earlier this month, the national carrier incorporated "innovative timetabling" under which running time of popular trains will reduce by 15 minutes to two hours.

The new timetable will also provide each railway division two to four hours for maintenance works.