Railway recruitment test on Thursday but no clarity on number of vacancies

Around 4.7 million candidates are appearing for these exams. The Railways had announced earlier it is going to hire over 100,000 people during the current financial year

With less than 24 hours to go for the world’s largest online recruitment drive, the Railways is still unclear about the exact number of vacancies available for selection of assistant loco pilots (ALP) and technicians.

The Railways had announced earlier it is going to hire over 100,000 people during the current financial year. The first stage of the massive hiring process extended over ten days, between August 9 and 31, was never short of controversies from delay in issuing notifications to allotment of far-away centres to candidates. For the current set of exams, initially, the Railways was planning to hire 26,502 candidates, but it came out with a notification saying that 60,000 people are “likely to be” hired. Around 4.7 million candidates are appearing for these exams.  

“The exact number of candidates who will be hired would be known after exams or before August 31,” said a government official. Interestingly, out of the 60,000 jobs announced last week, a small number will be allotted for the waitlisted candidates from the previous exams. It is not yet clear whether Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is informed about the change in the number of candidates.

However, the Railway Recruitment Board is yet to notify the dates for the “Group D Recruitment 2018” examination. The Railways will be filling around 62,907 Group D vacancies, for which around 19 million people have applied. This exam is expected to take place sometime in September. The exams were never short of controversies since its announcement, as a group of student organisations under Rozgar Mange India came out in protests on the delay in Railways conducting the tests.

This was followed by agitations across the country on the exorbitant fees of Rs 500 per candidate. After facing public ire, the Railways clarified that only Rs 100 will be charged and the remaining amount will be reimbursed after the exams. Railways also faced challenges from frauds offering jobs in Railways, following which it came out with massive awareness campaigns too. Initially, there were other controversies that the RRB faced, which included protests regarding the omission of certain languages like Malayalam from the list. The tests would be conducted across 500-odd centres in 15 languages for over a month in different shifts.

The latest controversy was regarding the allocation of faraway exam centres. Following this, Railways came out with the clarification that more than 71 per cent of the 4.7 million candidates appearing for the exams for the posts of assistant loco pilot and technician were allocated centres within 200 km of their cities. Under the revamped system, exam centres will have increased security features like closed-circuit cameras, mobile jammers and metal detectors.

Showing signs of poor planning, the ministry also came out with announcements of special trains to meet the candidate rush just two days ahead of the exam date, when the majority of the candidates would have already charted out their travel plans.