The central government is latching on to the employment engine to speed up its political train running on election tracks. This involves a plan to recruit appx 2,30,500 youth in Railways. The Railway Minister Mr Piyush Goel has claimed that the Railways will complete this recruitment process by 2021. Furthermore, there will be a separate quota for the economically weaker sections belonging to the general category.

The Minister added saying that thes 2.3 lakh posts will be in addition to the ongoing recruitment drive ( for which the exams were already held in 2017/18), which is for more than a lakh and a half positions. The successfull candidates will have started getting jobs by this March itself.

In the next two years, approximately two and a half lakh Railway employees will be retiring, and recruitment process for filling up these vacancies will soon be set in motion. He stated that no change will be brought about in the existing reservation system. The Scheduled castes / tribes and other backward classes will still be eligible to avail of the same benefits from reservation as they were entitled to earlier. In this manner, the Indian Railways will be infused with youthful vigour.

Recruitment of these 2.3 lakh posts will be done in two stages-

Stage 1: This will be for 131428 posts, the recruitment process for which will start in Feb-March 2019 and the allotment will be completed by April-May 2020.

Stage 2: This will be for 99,000 posts, the recruitment process for which will start in May-June 2020 and the allotment will be completed by July - Aug 2021.

The break up of posts for the reservation categories is as folllows:

• OBC - 62485
• SC - 34715
• ST - 17357
• Economically Backward Section - 23,042