On his appointment as Director on the Board of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Krishna Kumar Thakur, 49, has assumed charge as Director (Human Resources) of the Public Sector engineering and manufacturing enterprise.

Thakur is a 1998 batch officer of the Indian Railway Personnel Service (IRPS). He is a Post-Graduate in Literature from Tilka Manjhi University, Bhagalpur and has done his Post-Graduate Diploma in Management with specialisation in Human Resource (PGDM-HR) from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

Prior to joining BHEL, Mr. Thakur was heading the HR and Administration function of Central Railway as Chief Personnel Officer. He has 25 years of holistic and hands-on experience in handling HR matters and administration in the Indian Railways as well as other Central PSUs.

In his long career in Railways and other PSUs, Mr. Thakur has headed the HR departments of three important Railway divisions namely Solapur, Bhopal & Mumbai, which included all HR matters of the thirty-five thousand staff of the Mumbai Division. As Chairman, Railway Recruitment Cell, Western Railway, he successfully completed recruitment of approximately twelve thousand employees.

 While working on secondment with RITES, he served in a foreign project of Train Operation at Saudi Arabia and his contribution was critical in the issuance of work visas (IQAMA), procurement of human capital and efficient management of resources, meeting client's satisfaction in a time bound manner. He has also headed the HR department of Konkan Railway Corporation Limited, where he played an important role in developing and streamlining HR policy and procedures.

 As an HR professional, Mr. Thakur is credited with maintaining cordial industrial relations and fulfilling corporate responsibilities as well as long-term systemic improvements for corporate and government functioning in overall organisational perspectives.