Arun Arora takes additional charge of General Manager of Kolkata Metro Railway

Kolkata, India (Metro Rail Today): The 1984-batch topper and Indian Railway Services of Mechanical Engineering Arun Arora, General Manager, Eastern Railway has assumed the additional charge of General Manager, Kolkata Metro Railway on March 1, 2022. He will also act as Chairman of Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation Ltd., implementing East-West Corridor of Kolkata Metro Rail Project.

During his distinguished career spanning over 35 years, Arora has successfully handled many important & challenging assignments which include Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer/Northern Railway, the largest zone of Indian Railways & Divisional Railway Manager/Delhi, the biggest division of IR. In addition, some other diverse key assignments include Chief Rolling Stock Engineer/Operations & Freight/N.Rly, CVO/DFCCIL, Director Mechanical Engineering/ Freight/ Rly Board, Chief Public Relations Officer/N.Rly & Deputy Secretary in Ministry of  Steel & Mines.

Arora is an alumnus of Premier institutions- IIT Delhi, SCRA & University of Queensland. He holds Bachelor’s Degrees in Mechanical and Production Engineering and has done MBA from University of Queensland, Australia. He has received twice the National Railway Award for outstanding contribution to railway working, which is a rare honour as normally it is awarded only once during the entire career of any Railway man. 

He played a key role as Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Northern Railway, New Delhi in launching India’s Fastest Conventional Train Gatiman Express (max. speed of 160 Kmph) between Delhi and Agra during 2016. Later he played a pivotal role in introduction of the First Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Varanasi during Feb 2019 & 2nd Vande Bharat Express between New Delhi and Katra during October 2019 during his tenure as Principal Chief Mechanical Engineer/N.Rly. This ushered a new era of high speed travel with the introduction of first two high speed 160 kmph fit Fastest Train sets of India. He was closely associated with the Mission 800 MT embarked and successfully executed by IR by leveraging high axle load and high speed wagon designs introduced during his tenure as Director Mechanical Engineering/Freight in Rly Board. He assisted the High Level Committee on Disaster Management constituted by the Govt in 2002-2003 in formulating the action plan for strengthening of IR’s disaster management capability, which has been successfully implemented.

He has an extensive exposure to develop railway systems in the world - Germany Doutch Bahn Railway, SNCF French Railway, Italian Railways & US Rail Roads. He had also been deputed for senior management leadership programs to Bocconi Business School, Italy and Tepper Business School of Carnegie Melon University, USA.

During his tenure as General Manager (ER), Eastern Railway has displayed stellar performance in diverse domains e.g. registering best ever freight loading during FY2021-22, which is 67.8 MT thereby achieving 8.3 MT more than last year. Eastern Railway has already surpassed last year freight loading of 2020-21 in February, 22 itself. Eastern Railway aims to achieve 75 MT during FY2021-22.