Centre rules out special recruitment drives for vacancies in Railways

The Centre on Wednesday ruled out special recruitment drives for filling vacancies of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in Railways.

Replying to supplementaries in the Lok Sabha, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the Railways has been recruiting personnel at regular intervals and there was no need to launch special drives.

He said the last special recruitment drive by the Railways was held in 2008 to clear the backlog of vacancies of SCs, STs and OBCs.

In pursuance of Special Recruitment Drive launched in the year 2008 as per the directives of DOP&T, as many as 14868 backlog vacancies [SCs (4003), STs (4143) & OBCs (6722)] were identified for clearance in a time-bound manner and the same had been fully cleared as on 31.03.2017, Vaishnaw said.

He said since 2010, the recruitment process in Railways was being done regularly through authorised recruiting agencies namely Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) and Railway Recruitment Cells (RRCs).

The shortfall or backlog vacancies of SCs, STs and OBCs left unfilled are taken care of in the subsequent recruitment cycle, Vaishnaw said.

He said the Railways is having on-line recruitment and the process is being expedited.

A total of 1,40,713 vacancies, including 20,944 SC and 10,930 ST, are presently under recruitment for level-1 to level-7, the minister said.