Railway Board Orders All Zones To Fill Promotional Vacancies

In response to the tragic train accident in Balasore, Odisha, the Railway Board has instructed all railway zones to initiate a campaign to fill the vacant positions in the safety category. Media reports indicate that the Railway Board has stressed the importance of filling promotion vacancies.

This directive has been sent to the general managers of all railway zones, urging them to employ diverse promotion methods, including selection, non-selection, trade tests, LDCE (Departmental Competitive Examination) and GDCE (General Departmental Competitive Examination), to fill up the vacancies.

The Railway Board has mandated that all railway zones collect comprehensive information about the vacant positions and devise recruitment plans accordingly. The zones have the option to conduct targeted campaigns to address these vacancies.

Highlighting the importance of each zonal railway to evaluate its vacancies and establish plans, the Railway Board has asked to fill the seats based on their updated selection calendars. It emphasised the need for a dedicated campaign to address promotional vacancies, especially in safety-related roles.

Furthermore, the order acknowledges a lack of consistent updates from the zonal railways regarding monthly promotions and quarterly targets on the shared Google Sheets. These sheets serve as a centralised database for monitoring vacancies throughout the railway system.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed the Rajya Sabha in December 2022, stating that the Railways has approximately 3.12 lakh vacant non-gazetted posts. Among these, the Signal and Telecommunication Department has 14,815 vacant positions, while the Traffic Transport Department hosts 62,264 vacancies.

The engineering department has the highest number of vacant positions, with 87,654 vacancies, followed by the Mechanical Department with 64,346 vacancies and the Electrical Department with 38,096 vacancies.

As of February 3, 2023, the South Eastern Railway, which includes the Bahanaga Bazar station where the June 2 tragedy occurred, reportedly has 17,811 vacancies for non-gazetted posts and 150 vacant gazetted posts. In 2019, the Railways initiated a large-scale recruitment drive, and the process of appointing selected candidates is currently in progress. This extensive drive aims to fill over one lakh positions in the national transportation system.