Pompa Babbar of Railways Accounts Service joins as financial commissioner

Pompa Babbar has taken over as the Financial Commissioner and ex-officio secretary of Indian Railways. Prior to this, she was General Manager of Integral Coach Factory, Chennai.

A 1975 batch Indian Railways Accounts Services officer, Ms Babbar had worked in various capacities as divisional railway manager (Alipurdar division of Northeast Frontier Railway), financial adviser and chief accounts officer in Western, Central and Northern Railways. She also worked as senior professor in Railway Staff College, Vadodara. She had earlier worked as General Manger (Accounts), while on deputation to Gujarat State Electricity Board between 1995 and 1998.

During her tenure as senior professor, Vadodara, she had conducted courses for financial management, training for trainers, communication skills, stress management, transactional analysis and team building, a railways release said.

She was instrumental in signing of MOUs between Indian Railways and Russian Railways. She also visited France in connection with accounting reforms, and visited Australia as part of a high level delegation for study of heavy hual system.

As advisor (finance), Railway Board, she had rendered financial advice on Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiatives and also of IR’s joint ventures.

7 new posts created under CBEC

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the creation of 7 posts of Indirect Tax Ombudsman to be located in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Calcutta, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Lucknow in the HAG plus scale of Rs 75,500-80,000 per month and the supporting staff. The Indirect Tax Ombudsman Guidelines, 2011, has also been approved. It is expected that the move will make grievance redressal mechanism in the customs, central excise and the service taxes offices under the CBEC more effective and transparent.

According to government releases, the Indirect Tax Ombudsman will have powers to receive complaints from tax payers on indirect tax matters and consider such complaints and facilitate their satisfaction or settlement by agreement through conciliation and mediation between the Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax department and the aggrieved parties or by passing an “Award” in accordance with the guidelines.

Civil Services interviews to be held on April 14

The Civil Services personality test or interviews will be held by the Union Public Service Commission on April 14, 2011 as scheduled. There is no change in the schedule of this examination though April 14, 2011 has been declared a closed holiday on account of the birthday of Dr BR Ambedkar for all Central government offices.