Railways relaxes age limit, introduces more languages in recruitment tests

After protests in Bihar and Kerala, the railways on Monday relaxed the upper age limit of employing people in various categories and said that the option of taking the recruitment exam in regional languages including Bangla and Malayalam would be made available.

In a statement, the railways said, in the exam for assistant loco pilots and loco pilot, the revised upper age limit for the unreserved category has been fixed at 30 years, while it was 28 earlier. For OBCs it has been revised to 33 years from the earlier 31 years. For the SC and ST category, the age relaxation has been fixed at 35 years from the present 33.

Similarly, for the Group D exams for unreserved category, the upper age limit has been fixed at 30 years from 28 years. For OBCs, the age limit has been revised to 36 years from 34 years, for SC and STs it has been hiked from 36 years to 38 years.

Online applications were earlier invited in January and February for nearly 90,000 posts in Group C Level (Erstwhile Group D) like track maintainer, points man, helper, gate man, porter and group C Level II categories like assistant Loco Pilots (ALP), technicians (Fitter, Crane Driver, Blacksmith, Carpenter) through Railway Recruitment Boards website.

"It has also been decided that the questions in regional languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Odia, Telugu, Bangla and others will be available for candidates to take the exam," the statement said.

This recruitment drive is open for candidates who have passed Class X and ITI for Group C Level I posts and Class X and ITI or diploma in engineering or a graduation in engineering.

While candidates from Kerala demanded that they be allowed to take the exam in Malayalam, those from Bihar turned to violent protests over the reduction of age limit.