Rlys gets ready to complete mega job drive by April 19

New Delhi: After facing criticism over the delay in announcing examination dates of the mega Railways recruitment drive, the Ministry of Railways has come out with a final timeline to conduct the mega recruitment drive from September onwards.

While talking to Millennium Post, Chairman Railways Board Ashwani Lohani said that scrutiny of eligible candidates would be done by July 10.

Notably, over 2.37 crore applicants have applied for about 1 lakh posts comprising of about 90,000 posts in group C and group D and for 9,500 openings in the Railway Protection Force.

"Since Railways is conducting such a mega recruitment drive for the first time, it took some time in examining the application forms. The scrutiny of application forms are in the final stage and it would be completed by July 10," Lohani said, adding that following the completion of vetting out eligible candidates, the process to issue admits would start.

"Admit cards for the examination would be issued online which could be downloaded by the candidates", he said, adding "The examination would start from September and it would be completed by November this year."

The results of successful candidates would be declared after a few days of completion of the written examination. The ministry has decided to conduct physical as well as psychological tests of all successful candidates in the months of December and January respectively.

"The final results of the examination would be declared either by March end or in April 2018," Lohani affirmed.

"We've not been recruiting for the last couple of years and to ensure better safety and security for passengers we require people," Lohani said.

When the Railways had declared about conducting the recruitment drive, it was dubbed as Tsunami by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal.

The national transporter has received over 50 lakh online applications for assistant loco pilots and technicians alone, while there are 26,502 loco pilot and technicians posts and 62,907 Group D posts open for recruitment.

The railway, which currently employs 1.3 million people, is filling up its vacant positions for engine drivers, technicians, carpenters, track inspection crews and other roles related to improving safety in the world's fourth-largest network.

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.

Question papers would be provided to the candidates in 15 languages -- Hindi, English, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Assamese, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Odia, Tamil and Telugu -- to ensure opportunities for candidates across India.

The recruitment drive would be the largest conducted by a government-run organisation since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office four years ago.