Bhubaneswar: Of late, the comment section of every other tweet from ‘Piyush Goyal’s Office’ or ‘Ministry of Railways’ is flooded with frantic queries about updates on the pending non-technical popular categories (NTPC) and Group D exams of Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), even though the tweets do not relate to jobs.
The Railways has invited tenders from exam conducting agencies for the initial Computer Based Tests (CBT) for NTPC jobs under the RRBs all over India. The last date for receipt of bids is April 16. The notifications for the exams were out in February and March 2019. The recruitment tests were supposed to be tentatively conducted between June and September 2019.
There were more than 35,000 vacancies for the NTPC undergraduate and graduate posts. The RRB Group D had over 1 lakh vacancies, as per sources.
Railways Minister Piyush Goyal informed the Parliament that more than 1 crore candidates across the country have applied for the Group D posts. Sources at East Coast Railway (ECoR) said lakhs of students have applied for both the exams from Odisha. However, there is no notification from the Railways regarding the conduct of the tests.
“Exam dates apart, the final list of candidates for both the exams are not yet published. How long are students supposed to wait? I got the books and started preparing for the test but it’s almost a year now. If someone is 28-year-old already, he/she may not get a chance further. I don’t see the exams happening for another six months,” said a city based aspirant Trinath Padhi (name changed). Padhi had applied for both the positions last year.
“The delay is incredibly frustrating and irritating for the candidates, especially those who solely look forward to Railway recruitments. For instance a lot of students look forward to Group D posts as these jobs do not require an English proficiency test,” said Sanjit Panda, who has applied for NTPC posts. A large number of students are in anguish after having paid the application fees and are still waiting for the exams.
The application fee for both the exams is Rs 500 for General category and Rs 250 for other categories like SC/ST/Minority Communities. Considering the number of aspirants, the Indian Railways has netted a whopping Rs 350 crore towards application fees.
It must be noted here that the Railways is supposed to refund Rs 400 out of Rs 500 for General category applicants after conduct of the first stage CBT, making the application fees essentially Rs 100. For other categories, Rs 250 was to be refunded post the CBT or the screening test. Candidates qualifying the CBT will be called for a Physical Efficiency Test (PET) later.
Sources at RRB Bhubaneswar said they don’t have much idea about the reasons behind the delay in floating of the tenders either.
Nivedita Nayak, OP