Ashwani Lohani is a retired officer of

Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers The Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineering (IRSME) is one of the group 'A' central engineering services of the Indian railways. The officers of this service are responsible for managing the Mechanical Engineering Division of the Indian ...

. He has earlier worked as the Chairman & Managing Director of

Air India Air India is the flag carrier airline of India, headquartered at New Delhi. It is owned by Talace Private Limited, a Special-Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of Tata Sons, after Air India Limited's former owner, the Government of India, completed the sa ...

and the former Chairman of the Railway Board of Indian Railways. After being retired from Government service on 23 July 2020 he joined

GMR Group GMR Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in New Delhi. The group was founded in 1978 by Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao (G M Rao) and comprises several companies including GMR Infrastructure, GMR Energy, GMR Airports, GMR Ent ...

where He is currently serving as

Chief Executive Officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Early life and education

Lohani was born in

Kanpur Kanpur or Cawnpore ( /kɑːnˈpʊər/ pronunciation (help·info)) is an industrial city in the central-western part of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. Founded in 1207, Kanpur became one of the most important commercial and military stations o ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

. He completed his schooling at St. Aloysius High School,

and studied engineering at

Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering The Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE), was founded in 1888 as a technical school and commenced training Mechanical Officers for Indian Railways in 1927. It is the oldest of the five Centralised Trainin ...

(IRIMEE), Jamalpur. He is a mechanical engineer; as part of his training at IRIMEE, he attended training in mechanical, electrical and telecommunications at Jamalpur Workshop. He holds four engineering degree in

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, and ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

metallurgical engineering Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

and

electronics & telecommunication engineering Telecommunications Engineering is a subfield of electrical engineering which seeks to design and devise systems of communication at a distance. The work ranges from basic circuit design to strategic mass developments. A telecommunication enginee ...

from Institution of Engineers,

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, India and the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. Ashwani is from the 1980s batch of Indian Railways Service officer & joined as the director for the National Rail Museum in 1993. In 2001 he joined

India Tourism Development Corporation The India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) is a hospitality, retail and education company owned by Government of India, under Ministry of Tourism. Established in 1966, it owns over 17 properties under the Ashok Group of Hotels brand, acros ...

as Chairman and Managing Director. In 2004 he also become Commissioner and Managing Director of

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

Tourism Development Corporation, a position that he held for almost six years in three different spells. At the end of 2009 he also served as Divisional Railway Manager, Delhi Division. After 2 years he joined Northern Railway as Chief Mechanical Engineer. He then served as Chief Administrative Officer in the

Ministry of Railways A Ministry of Railways is a Cabinet department that exists or has existed in many Commonwealth states as well as others. It generally occurs in countries where railroad transportation is a particularly important part of the national infrastructur ...

. In 2015 he was appointed as the Chairman and Managing Director of

. Moreover, he has been a Non-Executive Director of

Air Mauritius Air Mauritius is the flag carrier airline of Mauritius. The airline is headquartered in Port Louis, Mauritius, with its hub based at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport. The company was placed in voluntary administration on 22 April ...

Limited since October 2015. In 2017, he became the

Chairman The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...

Railway Board The Ministry of Railways is a ministry in the Government of India, responsible for the country's rail transport. The ministry operates the statutory body Indian Railways, an organisation that operates as a monopoly in rail transport and is h ...

. In February 2019, he was reappointed as the Chairman and Managing Director of

Records

He holds an omega aquaterra 2017 Limca Record for having four engineering degrees in

and

from

Institution of Engineers (India) The Institution of Engineers (India) is the national organization of engineers in India. It has more than one million members in 15 engineering disciplines in 125 centers or chapters in India and overseas; it is the world's largest multi-disci ...

; a place in the

Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...

for successfully running the ‘ Fairy Queen Express’, the world's oldest working steam locomotive.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lohani, Ashwani Businesspeople in tourism Indian aviation businesspeople Indian chairpersons of corporations Indian metallurgists Living people 1958 births Alumni of the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Indian Railways officers Chairpersons of the Railway Board