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

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.

Also Read : Railway recruitment 2018: 100 questions, 100,000 vacancies, 24 mn aspirants

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.