Railway recruitment test on Thursday but no clarity on number of vacancies

Railway Recruitment - With less than 24 hours to go for the world’s largest online recruitment drive, the India Railways is still unclear about the exact number of vacancies available for selection of assistant loco pilots (ALP) and technicians.

The Railways had announced earlier it is going to hire over 100,000 people during the current financial year. The first stage of the massive hiring process extended over ten days, between August 9 and 31, was never short of controversies from delay in issuing notifications to allotment of far-away centres to candidates. For the current set of exams, initially, the Railways was planning to hire 26,502 candidates, but it came out with a notification saying that 60,000 people are “likely to be” hired. Around 4.7 million candidates are appearing for these exams.

“The exact number of candidates who will be hired would be known after exams or before August 31,” said a government official. Interestingly, out of the 60,000 jobs announced last week, a small number will be allotted for the waitlisted candidates from the previous exams. It is not yet clear whether Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is informed about the change in the number of candidates.

Indian Railways gives another chance to 70,000 candidates to apply again

Indian Railways is giving a second chance to 70,000 candidates whose job applications were rejected for uploading faulty photos. The Railway ministry has asked these aspirants to rectify their mistake by July 20.

Indian Railways Recruitment has received 4.8 million applications for 26,500 posts of assistant loco pilots and technicians.

"We realised that among the total applications that were found ineligible, around 127,000 candidates were found ineligible for invalid pictures. Out of the 127,000 people, now, 70,000 have been asked to make the changes in the pictures and upload them again," Rajesh Dutt Bajpai, Director Information and Publicity, Railway Board said to PTI.

An email and a message have been sent to the 70,000 applicants, who were given a second chance.

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IRCTC orders enquiry into complaint on quality of food in Duronto Express

The Railway's food catering arm IRCTC has ordered an enquiry into a complaint by a passenger of the 12246 Yeswantpur-Howrah Duronto Express about the quality of food served to him in the train, an IRCTC official said on Tuesday. 

IRCTC Group General Manager (east zone) Debasish Chanda said that there were, however, tweets by at least 23 passengers travelling by the same train that reached Howrah last evening stating that the quality and taste of the food served to them were good. "The gentleman may not have liked the taste, but the food served to him was definitely not stale," Chanda said.

Explained in 9 charts: How India got thousands of railway passengers to fly

There are a few things about the Indian railways’ performance and the boom in India’s aviation sector under the Narendra Modigovernment that catch the eye.

For one, in an unprecedented development, the number of rail passengers travelling in 2nd AC compartments in 2016-17 saw a steep decline from a year earlier. Secondly, fewer people have been using the Indian Railways services than during the last few years of the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Thirdly, the exponential growth seen in the number of India’s air travellers lately has as much to do with the pricing of railway tickets as with rising incomes and falling jet fuel prices leading to air tickets being more affordably priced.

And, finally, if India’s per capita income continues to increase at the pace it has over the past decade, and airlines continue to price tickets within the levels of decency – in addition to Indian Railways aiding airlines by providing poor services on trains despite rail tickets costing almost the same as air fares – there is little doubt that more Indians will pay a bit more and fly.

Budget proposal for new rail lines to boost SAIL's order book

The proposal of laying 3,500-km new rail lines by the Indian Railways would boost the order portfolio of state-run Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL).

In Budget 2017, proposal has been made to build new rail lines that would be about 25 per cent more than in the current financial year. In 2016-17, 2,800-km new rail lines were proposed.

The Indian Railways would be requiring about 420,000 tonnes of rails for the new lines, which SAIL would be supplying. The state-run steel maker is the sole supplier of rails to the Indian Railways.

The Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), the flagship entity of SAIL, is the only entity of the company producing rail. Besides new rail lines, India Railways had been procuring steel from the company for track replacement also. The BSP had been supplying about 700,000 tonnes of rail on average annually.

A senior SAIL official said that the company was now equipped to meet the entire demand of the Indian Railways in future. The newly dedicated state-of-the-art Universal Rail Mill (URM), established at a cost of about Rs 1,200 crore in BSP, would take the company’s total rail production capacity to 2.0 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). This would be the largest rail production capacity in any single location for a plant the world over.(Read More)