Railways is expected to announce around 20,000 more jobs which will be in addition to 90,000 already advertised by the transporter, taking the total to around 1.10 lakh jobs.
The new vacancies include 11,000 posts for assistant loco pilots and technicians and 9,000 for sub-inspectors and constables in Railway Protection force (RPF) out of which around 50% will be reserved for women.
The advertisements for new vacancies is likely to come in May.
The state-run transporter has received over two crore applications for about 90,000 vacancies, with four days still remaining for the online registration to end.
The online exam will be held for about 90,000 posts in group C and group D and for 9,500 openings in the RPF.
For assistant loco pilots and technicians alone, over 50 lakh online applications have been received, an official said.
There are 26,502 loco pilot and technicians posts and 62,907 Group D posts, including gangmen, switchmen, trackmen, cabinmen, welder, helpers and porters, open for recruitment.
As the job market in private sector is shrinking and opposition is targeting Modi government over job-less growth, the decision to leverage railways’ role as an employment generator will provide the ruling dispensation a cushion before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The plan to fill vacancies in safety related category is also in sync with railway minister Piyush Goyal’s announcement to strengthen safety in train operations which was dented by a series of derailments.
The move to fill the vacancies at ground level by massive hiring coupled with trimming of railway board by half seems to be Goyal’s strategy to “right-size” the railways which is “top-heavy”.
“Over two crore candidates have applied for the posts and the number will rise further as deadline is ending on March 31,” said a railway official.
Given the magnitude and the sheer scale of the test that is being conducted, the candidates will be given a window to check their answers after the completion of the exams and after the results are declared to maintain transparency.
The last date to apply is this Saturday.
TRAIN OF THOUGHT
- Indian Railways is one of the largest Railway network in the world under single management
- IR has a network of more than 68,312 route km and 1,35,000 track km.
- 12,600 trains carry 23 million passengers a day run on Indian Railways
- Out of the 9,500 new recruits in RPF, 4,200 will be women. The over all vacancy as of today stands approx. 1,20,000
- The share of women employees to increase from a mere 3.5% to 8.6%