The Indian Railways is set to fill up nearly 1.35 lakh vacancies this year. The Union Minister for Railways Ashwin Vaishnaw said that out of the 14.93 lakh sanctioned posts in the Indian Railways, more than 3.14 lakh are presently vacant. He added that the vacancies are being filled among the candidates who appeared for recruitment exams in recent years, reported The Hindu. The railways aim to fill up the gap between total sanction posts and vacant posts by 43 per cent by April.
Nearly 3.65 crore candidates applied for the railway recruitment process between 2020 and 2022. According to the report, up to 1,03,769 of the posts are in the Level 1 category. Around 1.1 crore candidates have applied for Level 1 posts so far, which includes vacancies for pointsmen, electrical works, transpersons, signal and telecom assistants.
About 1.25 crore candidates have applied for Non-Technical Popular Categories (NTPC) exams held between December 2020 and July 2021. An additional 1.3 crore aspirants applied for Indian Railways’ NTPC recruitment exams held between May 9 and October 11, 2022.
Once the exam is over, the next stage includes Physical Efficiency Tests (PET) for vacancies such as transpersons. Male candidates need to run 1,500m in 4.15 minutes, while female aspirants need to cover 1,000m in 5.40 minutes. These physical tests are likely to be completed in February.
Before the pandemic, a recruitment exam centre could easily accommodate up to 1,000 applicants. This was later reduced to 200-300 candidates due to strict social distancing norms. The coronavirus guidelines and norms have led to an increase in the number of days on which exams were conducted, adding to the delay in the recruitment process.
Indian Railways ties up with a few IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), National Computer Institute of Technology (NCIT), and Aptech, among others, to conduct computer-based tests for the recruitment process. The report added that the Railways spent about Rs 300 to Rs 400 per candidate at every stage of the exam. The exercise of conducting the exams has cost Railways above Rs 1,200 crore.
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