Sanjay Gupta, chairman and managing director (CMD), Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, has more than 30 years of experience in the railway sector.
Gupta started his career with the railways as a special class railway apprentice in 1981. Subsequently, after studying mechanical engineering at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jamalpur, he joined South Eastern Railway as an assistant mechanical engineer in 1988. Over the course of his career, he has worked with South Eastern Railway and Central Railway in various positions in the Indian Railway Services of Mechanical Engineers. He became the chief mechanical engineer of Konkan Railway in 2008, after which he was appointed director, operations and commercial, in 2013. In 2015, he was given additional charge of CMD, Konkan Railway, and a year later, he took over as CMD.
Assessing the current status of the railway sector, Gupta says, “The sector is the backbone of the country‘s transport infrastructure. For a large country like ours, railways are essential for the transportation of both passengers and goods. Notwithstanding what is written in the media, Indian Railways (IR) is a very responsible organisation and has been meeting the transport needs of the people and industries for years. It now needs major investments for which the process has been initiated and will yield results in the coming years.”
Gupta accords the highest importance to his team. According to him, during a crisis, it is the team that gets together, thinks the problem through and executes the solution as per the role and responsibility assigned to individual team members. He believes that it is the team that delivers results; therefore, all members should be given due credit.
Gupta feels that his present assignment is going to be the most memorable. As CMD of a vibrant and ever-changing railway set-up, he will need to deal with new and challenging issues almost every day, a task that he is looking forward to.
Besides studying mechanical engineering at IR’s institute at Jamalpur, Gupta has also taken a course on mechanical engineering in the UK. Gupta’s keenly interested in reading books and read sboth fiction and non-fiction extensively, though he has no particular favourite. He is also a keen traveller, and his ideal holiday would be to spend two weeks in Seychelles and Mauritius with no network connectivity.