After some candidates have raised concerns over the process of shortlisting of candidates for the second stage of the ongoing recruitment examination under Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs)’s Non-Technical Popular Categories (NTPC) exam results, the Ministry of Railways has now released a clarification addressing the concerns. The ministry said the RRB NTPC result was “strictly as per provision laid down in notificatio

“The procedure for shortlisting of candidates for the second stage computer based test (CBT) had already been given elaborately under Para 13 of the original notification i.e., CEN 01/2019 published on 28.02.2019. In this employment notification, thirteen categories were advertised which were open to graduates and six of these for under-graduates. …. Every candidate was free to opt for all or any of these thirteen categories subject to conditions of eligibility,” a release from the ministry said.

“While the first stage CBT was a common examination for all the candidates, Para 13.2 of the notification clearly states that in the 2nd stage CBT there would be a separate examination for each group (viz., Levels 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) with differing graded levels of difficulty,” the ministry said on the concerns have been expressed by the RRB NTPC candidates that the Railway Board had in the exam notification mentioned that CBT stage 1 will be qualifying exam and candidates 20 times the vacancies will be shortlisted for CBT 2.

The release also said the notification had nowhere mentioned that 7 lakh distinct candidates will get shortlisted for 2nd stage CBT.

“Since a 2nd Stage consists of CBT of five different levels and a candidate can be shortlisted for more than one level as per eligibility, merit and option, the lists of 7 lakh roll numbers will have some names appearing in more than one list,” it said.

Regarding the the cut offs of the RRB NTPC results, the ministry said they have been prepared on the basis of normalized marks that are normally higher than raw score. “Also cut off depends upon the number of vacancies notified for that level/post. Since about 10,500 vacancies have been notified for 10+2 candidates across 21 RRBs as against about 35000 where Graduate candidates are eligible, cut offs for 10+2 have been higher than Graduate candidates based on normalized score,” it said.