Indian Railway Conducts World's Largest Online Test To Fill More Than 18,000 Vacancies

In a bid to eliminate the scope of malpractices in its recruitment and give a huge platform to the right talent, Indian Railways conducted the world's "largest" online examination to fill up over 18,000 vacancies in various categories.

Indian railway conducts world's largest online test to fill more than 18000 vacancies.

¡ª Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) February 11, 2017

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A whopping 92 lakh candidates had applied for the jobs, of whom 2.73 lakh qualified the preliminary exam and were called for written test on January 17-19, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Reuters

The online examination will be managed by the Railway Recruitment Boards to fill up 18,252 graduate-level group-3 positions. Job profiles assistant station master, goods guard, inquiry-cum-reservation clerk, traffic and commercial apprentices and junior accounts assistant, will fall under this cadre.

Prior to this, the recruitment process used to be conducted manually, eventually leaving a lot of scope for errors and nepotism. Furthermore, especially after the alleged incidents of question paper leak, something had to be done.

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Describing it as the "largest online examination in the world", the official said that in order to ensure complete transparency, the railways has introduced the system of showing answer papers online to examinees one week after the examination.

"We have shown the examinees the answers given by them and the correct answers to the questions. We had also given them opportunities to raise objections, if any, till January 30," he added

The system is more crucial than ever now, with psychological tests for the position of assistant station masters and typing test for senior clerks.

All the appointment letters are expected to be given to successful candidates by May this year. At present, there are about 2 lakh vacancies in the railways which have about 13 lakh employees.

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However, all the vacancies will not be filled up as many posts are being frozen at the moment, he said.

Reuters

The railways will begin next recruitment drive for about 20,000 vacancies, including in the posts of assistant loco pilots and technical supervisor, in the next phase.

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