Bachcha Lal at work at Raxaul railway station. Picture by Sanjay Choudhary

Patna, May 22: Sounds incredible, but official records of an Indian Railways employee suggest he would be serving the public sector organisation for over a hundred years. Meet commerce graduate Bachcha Lal, who according to his salary slip joined the railway in 1926, almost 41 years before he was born.

Born in 1967, Bachcha is the chief reservation supervisor (II) posted at Raxaul railway station on the India-Nepal border in East Champaran district. His payslip shows that he joined the Indian Railways as an enquiry-cum-reservation clerk on September 27, 1926, almost eight years before the station became operational.

Sources said the railway station at Raxaul was set up in 1933-34. Now it is under the Samastipur division of East Central Railway.

Bachcha actually joined the railway on May 4, 1996. His first posting was at Sitamarhi.

The chief reservation supervisor is slated to retire on July 31, 2027, after serving the organisation “officially” for 101 years. The date of his retirement is correct, though. He will be 60 years old in 2027.

Hailing from Garikhana near Khagaul in Patna district, Bachcha graduated from Vanijya Vidyalaya under Patna University. He first detected the anomaly in his payslip in 2009.

“When I received my salary slip, I was shocked to find the year of my joining the department way back in 1926,” Bachcha told The Telegraph over phone today.

Bachcha had to face a lot of problems because of the irregularity in his payslip. “A bank refused to sanction me a loan on the ground that my date of appointment in the department was 1926. How can a man serve so long in an organisation?” he said, quoting the bank official.

Bachcha shot off several letters to the senior officials of the railway division seeking their intervention in rectifying the anomaly in his payslip, but in vain.

“I approached all the top officials — right from the divisional railway manager to the senior officials posted at the zonal office at Hajipur — but no action has been taken so far,” Bachcha said.

Efforts to contact Samastipur divisional railway manager (DRM) Satya Prakash proved futile. Even senior divisional commercial manager Sameer Kumar was not available for comments.

An official posted at the DRM office said Bachcha was suffering because of negligence on the part of the personnel department employees.