What is the new Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS), and how does recruitment work from 2025 onwards?

The Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) is a single, unified Group A cadre created by gazette notification in 2022 to merge the eight legacy Railway services — IRAS, IRPS, IRTS, IRSE, IRSEE, IRSME, IRSSE and IRSS — into one. Recruitment runs in two streams from CSE/ESE 2025 onwards: IRMS (Non-Technical) via the UPSC Civil Services Examination (CSE) and IRMS (Technical) via the Engineering Services Examination (ESE). ESE 2025 carries 225 IRMS vacancies split across Civil (75), Mechanical (40), Electrical (50), S&T (40) and Stores (20). The aim is to break departmentalism that the Bibek Debroy Committee (2015) had flagged as the single biggest drag on railway efficiency.