DNA Exclusive: Why are students protesting against Railway recruitment process

New Delhi: Railway job aspirants have been protesting for the past several days and some observed Bihar Bandh today to protest against the alleged irregularities in the Railway Recruitment Board's Non-Technical Popular Categories (RRB-NTPC) exam 2021.

Zee News Editor In Chief Sudhir Chaudhary in his show DNA analysed the reasons behind these protests and the growing distance between railway jobs and students' ambitions.

In 2019, Railway Recruitment Board had invited applications for a total of 35,277 posts in Non Technical Popular Categories (NTPC). The recruitment was announced for the posts of Junior Clerk, Train Assistant, Guard, Senior Time Keeper and Station Master and the maximum salary for these posts was Rs 35,000 per month. 

For these 35,000 vacancies, RRB had received more than 1.25 lakh applications. The official notification had mentioned that 20 times more students will be passed in the examination than the number of posts announced so that the maximum number of students can get a chance in the second stage exam. With this in mind, the results of the first phase were declared by the Railways on January 14 and 15, in which 20 times more students passed than the number of jobs. However, the procedure led to controversy among the aspirants. 

Many students had applied for more than one job and when the first stage result was declared many of these aspirants cleared the exam for different posts. The Railways counted one student four times if they had cleared the exam for four different posts. This led to anger among students who alleged that due to this process, even though more students passed in number, in reality only 10 percent of aspirants cleared the first stage. 

Students are also dissatisfied because of the delay in these exams. Railways had invited applications for these posts in 2019 and the exam was to be held in the month of September that year. However, the exam was postponed due to some reasons and later the first phase was conducted from December 2020 to July 2021. The results of the same examination were declared on January 14, 2022. The second phase examination was to be held on February 15, 2022, which has also been postponed. Railway Recruitment Board says that the reason for the delay in the examination is crores of applications for these jobs. 

Another point of contention is that the recruitment board had informed that the Group C Level 1 exam will be held in two phases on January 24, while students are alleging that the second exam was not even mentioned in the job notification. 

Moreover, as graduate students have also applied for Junior Clerk and Time Keeper jobs, Class 12th pass students feel that this will reduce their chances of getting a job, and hence, they want the central government to create different categories for them.

The root cause of all this is the recruitment process of these jobs. Recently, students in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar held demonstrations alleging irregularities. During these protests, the police lathi-charged the protesters in Prayagraj and Patna and also used water cannons on them while some students set fire to a train in Gaya. We believe that neither the coercive action by the police nor vandalism by the students is right. It is necessary that the voices of these aspirants are heard by the whole country today.