Ati Vishisht Rail Sewa Award: U.P. shines at awards function, RDSO bags one, NER takes three

Uttar Pradesh excelled at the 69th Ati Vishisht Rail Seva Awards, with North Eastern Railways winning three awards and RDSO's Abhishek Kumar Gautam honored for freight improvements.

Uttar Pradesh shone at the 69th Ati Vishisht Rail Seva Awards on Saturday with North Eastern Railways (NER) bagging three awards, while Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) bagging one award.

Abhishek Kumar Gautam, Director, RDSO getting railway award (HT Photo)

NER general manager Saumya Mathur was present to receive all the three shields.

During the event, a total of 22 shield winners were awarded in various fields.

Abhishek Kumar Gautam, director, RDSO, was awarded the Ati Vishisht Rail Seva Award. The award is the highest award given to employees for their exceptional contribution to the railways.

Gautam has done remarkable work in the field of freight operations. Nearly 4 lakh freight train coaches have been upgraded, due to which the Railways has benefited a lot.

On Saturday, railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav honoured 101 railway personnel, including Gautam, at Bharat Mandapam, in New Delhi.

“Abhishek Kumar Gautam had upgraded the freight train coaches. Due to which their capacity has increased to 100 kilometers per hour. Due to the increase in their speed, the cost of operating freight trains to the railways has reduced by about 15%. Not only this, Abhishek Kumar Gautam has also developed elastomeric pads. Due to this, the failure rate in freight trains has come down from 20.79 to just 0.27%. This has saved the railways about ₹50 crore annually,” said Railways in its statement.

While NER won three awards including “Safety shield,” and “RailMadad Shield”, “Govind Vallabh Pant Shield” jointly with Central Railway. This shield is given to the zone for special works in various fields.

North and South East Central Railway were jointly declared winners in the Signal and Telecommunication Engineering Shield.