'Over 2 lakh vacancies in Railways; NR tops with 27,000 posts'

Over 2 lakh posts are lying vacant across many groups in the railways, with majority of them in the Northern Zone of the network, the parliament was informed today.
In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said 2,22,159 posts are vacant in the rail network.
The Delhi-headquartered Northern Railways (NR) with 27,537 vacancies tops the list of rail zones with maximum vacant posts, followed by Eastern Railway (19,942 posts) headquartered in Kolkata, and Central Railway (19,651 posts) with its head office in Mumbai, he said.
"Filling up of vacancies is a continuous process and is done through various modes of intake. There is always a time lag between occurrence of vacancies and processing the same for filling up as it involves notification of vacancies, holding examinations etc...recruitment process of railways is done regularly," Goyal said.

The minister also informed the House that a total of 41,128 vacancies of SC/ST posts are lying vacant in railways across the country.
The highest number of vacancies in these posts is again in Northern Railways i.e. 8,995 vacancies, he added.