Over 77,000 Indian Railways posts vacant in signal, traffic departments

Highlighting the stark difference between retirement and recruitment figures, Vaishnaw had stated in the Rajya Sabha that 4,666 posts were filled in 2021–22, against the 44,847 employees who had retired.

In 2020–21, the numbers were 5,744 and 46,988 respectively. He was responding to queries raised by Congress MP Phulo Devi Netam.

It was also revealed that as on 1 January 2023, there were 7,427 vacancies in the OBC category, and 6,112 and 5,131 in the SC and ST categories respectively.

Responding to Kerala’s IUML MP Abdul Wahab, the railway ministry had acknowledged that members of the National Railway Mazdoor Union Central Railway had protested at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in front of the divisional railway manager’s office after duty hours, with demands that included the filling up of vacancies in different categories of the non-gazetted Group C posts.

In the Central Railway zone alone, the total number of vacant non-gazetted group C posts was 28,650, including 14,203 posts in the safety category posts and 14,447 other posts, the minister had told Wahab.

Data from both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha responses reveal that between 2019–20 and 2020–21, the number of staff employed by the Indian Railways decreased from 1,235,900 to 1,233,700. During 2020–21, a total of 440,000 candidates had given exams for the 1,923 vacancies in the ministerial and isolated categories, while 12.6 million candidates had given the exam for 35,281 vacancies in the non-technical popular categories.

According to a report in The Hindu, the minister had underscored that the Indian Railways would fill nearly 135,000 vacancies this year. Nearly 36.5 million aspirants had applied between 2020 and 2022 for jobs in the Indian Railways.