AK Pandey, IRSE Officer, Named Principal Chief Engineer at South East Central Railway
Avanish Kumar Pandey, an IRSE officer, has been posted as the Principal Chief Engineer at the South East Central Railway following a transfer from the Central Railway.
Avanish Kumar Pandey has been transferred from his position as Chief Administrative Officer/Construction at Central Railway to South East Central Railway, where he will serve as Principal Chief Engineer. He is an officer of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers.
The Principal Chief Engineer position is a Chief Head of Department-level posting responsible for a zone's civil engineering infrastructure, including track maintenance, bridge safety, station civil works, and coordination of ongoing capital projects with the zone's construction wing, a portfolio distinct from but closely coordinated with the Chief Administrative Officer/Construction role Pandey previously held at Central Railway, which focuses more specifically on new project execution rather than ongoing infrastructure maintenance.
South East Central Railway, headquartered in Bilaspur, serves a network with significant freight traffic tied to the coal and mineral-rich belt of Chhattisgarh and neighbouring states, making track and bridge infrastructure reliability a particularly consequential responsibility given the heavy axle-load freight movement the zone's civil infrastructure must support day to day.
Pandey's move from a construction-focused CAO role to the PCE's maintenance and infrastructure-integrity mandate represents a shift in emphasis from new project delivery to sustained operational safety of existing track and structures, though both roles draw on the same core civil engineering expertise within the Indian Railway Service of Engineers cadre.
Chief Head of Department-level PCE postings report to the zone's General Manager and form part of the core technical leadership responsible for infrastructure safety compliance, an area that has received heightened Railway Board attention following recent safety reviews prompted by a series of accidents across the network.
The transfer and posting order was issued through the Railway Board's standard cadre management process governing IRSE officer movements across zones.
