Former chairman of the Railway Board and two-time Chief of Air India, Ashwani Lohani (IRSME:1980), has joined GMR Group’s Services Business (which includes railways) as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This move of the company, come amid the process of expanding its wings in the Railways sector by showing interests in the private train project, station redevelopment plans and dedicated freight corridors (DFC).
He retired 19 months ago, from the post of Chairman of the Railway Board. In August 2015 that Lohani took charge of Air India and was termed the turnaround man of the national carrier.
After that, he headed the Indian railways from August 2017 to December 2018. He pushed infrastructure works, which eventually brought down the number of accidents to zero now.
In February 2019, he was back again in Air India for a one-year term.
In its 2018-19 annual report, GMR highlighted that it is betting big on the planned third dedicated East Coast Freight Corridor between Kharagpur and Vijaywada costing more than Rs 50,000 Crore funded by the World Bank.
Early this month, GMR was shortlisted for the redevelopment of four railway stations – Nagpur, Gwalior, Amritsar and Sabarmati – on a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
