Guwahati: Announcing 1.4 lakh vacancies, the Indian Railways today said that it will conduct the first stage of computer-based exams in order to fill the vacancies from 15 December 2020, Railway Board Chairman Vin K Yadav said today.
The announcement from the Ministry of Railways came in the backdrop of the NEET (UG) and JEE (Mains) 2020 examinations being held amid the pandemic and the ministry hoped to start the process of Railways recruitment which had been restricted due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Ministry in a statement said that the railways too shall re-commence recruitment that had been halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic after the conduct of the JEE and NEET exams.
These are, 35,208 posts in non-technical popular categories (NTPC) like guards, office clerks, commercial clerks, and others, 1,663 posts for isolated and ministerial categories such as steno and teaches, and 1,03,769 for level-one vacancies such as track maintainers and pointsman, the ministry said in a statement earlier.
The Railway Recruitment Board had received more than 2.40 crore applications against the above vacancies.
The Computer Based Test (CBT) for the railway vacancies had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant lockdown.
Scrutiny of the applications had been completed but the process of further examination had got delayed due to COVID-19 related restrictions, the ministry said in a statement.
"We invited applications for recruitment in various categories for 1,40,640 posts. These were notified in the pre-COVID period. Scrutiny of these applications was completed, but due to COVID-19 pandemic a computer-based examination could not be completed," Yadav said.
RRBs of Railways is committed to holding the CBT for all the notified vacancies and have been actively assessing the ground situation imposed due to the pandemic. All the government prescribed SOPs shall be adhered to while conducting the exams.