Travel Allowance Rule Regarding Controlling officers
1. General Managers/Divisional Railway Managers and Heads of Departments shall be their own Controlling Officers. All Officers of the rank of Junior Administrative Grade (JAG) and above shall be their own Controlling Officers for countersignature on TA journals. A Head of Department may declare what authorities subordinate to him shall be the Controlling Officers, for the purpose of traveling allowance of railway servants or classes of railway servants employed under him. No authority shall be declared by him to be his own Controlling Officer without the previous sanction of the Ministry of Railways. (IREC -1697)
(Authority: Board’s letter No. F (E) I/2003/AL-8/3 dated 20-11-2003 & 07.01.2004)
2. No bill for traveling allowance, other than permanent travelling allowance shall be paid unless it be signed or counter signed by the Controlling Officer of the railway servant concerned. (IREC -1698)
NOTE:-- It is not necessary for the Controlling Officer to countersign the bills for conveyance allowance every month, but he should certify in the pay bills pertaining to the months of January, April, July and October each year, to the effect that the conveyance allowance claimed is in order and that the conditions attached to its drawal have been fulfilled.
3. A Controlling Officer shall not delegate to a subordinate railway servant his duty of countersignature, except when he is expressly permitted to do so by the authority who declared him to be a Controlling Officer. (IREC -1690)
4. It is the duty of a Controlling Officer, before signing or countersigning a travelling allowance bill-- (IREC -1700)
(1) to scrutinize the necessity, frequency and duration of journeys and halts for which travelling allowance is claimed, to disallow the whole or any part of the travelling allowance claimed for any journey or halt if he considers that a journey was unnecessary or unduly protracted or that a halt was of excessive duration;
(2) to scrutinize carefully the distances entered in travelling allowance bills;
(3) to satisfy himself that, mileage allowance for journeys by steamer has been claimed at the rate applicable to the class of accommodation actually used and that where the actual cost of transporting servants, personal effects, etc. is claimed under the rules in this chapter, the scale on which such servants, effects, etc., were transported was reasonable and to disallow any claim which, in his opinion, does not fulfil that condition;
(4) to check any tendency to abuse the concession of taxi hire sanctioned under rule 1607 and to consider the advisability of its replacement in any particular case by a fixed motor car or motor cycle allowance if in his opinion the monthly bill of the officer on account of taxi hire is excessive; and
(5) to observe any subsidiary rules or orders which the Head of the Department may make for his guidance
