Speed Post News Network
New Delhi : The Railways Minisyry is undertaking what can be called the world’s largest recruitment exercise for filling up critical safety and operational posts. On the first day of exam, Ashwani Lohani, Chairman, Railway Board, visited one of the test centres of Delhi/NCR on August 9, 2018, to personally see the arrangements made for smooth conduct of exam and for candidates. He also visited a command centre from where the position of all 439 exam centres in 166 cities across the country is being monitored for every step of the process i.e. pre exam, during exam and post exam.
At present, two recruitment notifications- one for Assistant Loco Pilots (ALPs) and the other for Level-I (erstwhile group D) posts, for filling up about 1.2 lakh vacancies are under process.
Total Posts of Assistant Loco Pilots (ALPs) and Technicians are around 60,000. About 47.55 lakh candidates have applied for these Posts. Vacancies for Level-I posts (erstwhile group D) are 63,000 and around 1.9 crore candidates have applied for these posts. Around 2.4 crores applicants have applied making it the largest recruitment exercise, according to aPIB release.
Computer Based Test (CBT) for the posts of ALP & Technician recruitment has began successfully on August 9. This examination is being conducted in 166 cities at 439 exam centers across India. The cities are spread from Srinagar in J&K to all North Eastern States and many other towns in the country including Port Blair.
The examinations will be conducted in 3 shifts per day for 10 days up to August 31, 2018. Question papers are being provided to the candidates in 15 languages. This is a big step in the interest of candidates belonging to different vernacular backgrounds.
On August 9, a total of 4.83 lakh candidates i.e. approx. 1.60 lakh per shift were scheduled. There has been a tremendous response and an unprecedented number of more than 74% candidates (3,59,605) appeared at the examination. This attendance is a record for all RRB- examinations conducted so far.
During the Recruitment process every effort has been made to provide nearby centres to the candidates, while keeping in view the constraint of availability of suitable centres, equipped with necessary infrastructure and security provisions.
Around 83% candidates have been provided centres within 500 km of their home. Special care has been taken to ensure that almost all women candidates and Persons with Disability are provided centres within 200 km.
Even for those candidates who could not be accommodated within 500 kilometer, Indian Railways has taken extra efforts and arranged exam special trains from places like Deoria, Chhapra, Patna, Darbhanga, Muzaffurpur, Ara to destinations such as Secunderabad, Bhopal, Indore, NCR etc.
RRBs follow the practice of direct and instantaneous communication with candidates through regular updates on web-sites and individual SMSs and emails.