Railways to start conducting exams for 1.40 lakh posts in 3 categories from 15 December

Drawing from the NEET-JEE exams, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav said that Railways too can start the process which had been stopped due to the pandemic.

Indian Railway Traffic Service, Indian Railway Accounts Service and Indian Railway Personnel Service constitute the railway’s civil services | ThePrint.in

New Delhi: The Indian Railways will start conducting computer-based examinations for around 1.40 lakh posts from December 15, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav said Saturday.

Around 2.42 crore applications have been received for these posts, he said.

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 railway board chairman said the exams could not be conducted till now due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The computer-based exams will begin from December 15 for the three categories of posts and a detailed schedule will be announced very soon,” Yadav said.

“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.

Railway Recruitment Boards are committed to holding computer-based tests for all notified vacancies and have been actively assessing the ground situation amid the pandemic, a statement from the Railways said.

Yadav said that since now the experience of holding examination for the JEE and NEET is there, it was felt that the Railways too can start the process which had to be stopped due to coronavirus pandemic.

Standard operating procedures for conducting the examination are being framed.