NEW DELHI: The railways has decided to give a second chance to 70,000 candidates, whose job applications were rejected due to faulty upload of photos, by giving them a window of three days to rectify their mistakes, a spokesperson of the ministry said today.
While scrutinising the applications, officials realised that out of the 48 lakh applications received by railways for the 26,500 posts of assistant loco pilots and technicians, 1.33 lakh were found to be ineligible for varied reasons.
"We realised that among the total applications that were found ineligible, around 1. 27 lakh candidates were found ineligible for invalid pictures. We decided to look at those applications again and give them a second chance."
"Out of the 1.27 lakh people, now, 70,000 have been asked to make the changes in the pictures and upload them again," said Rajesh Dutt Bajpai, Director Information and Publicity, Railway Board.
The railways has given candidates three days -- July 18-July 20 -- to rectify their mistakes and upload their pictures on the railway recruitment board site.
Sources say that applications of another 57,000 candidates were internally reviewed and re-considered, without any need for changes from applicants' side.
Out of the total applications found ineligible, only 7,000 applications were rejected because of earlier cases of cheating or any other reasons for which they were barred from appearing from railway exams.
The 70,000 applicants, who were given a second chance, were sent emails and messages, asking them to rectify their mistakes.
Bajpai also said a similar process would be followed for other posts advertised by the railways earlier this year, giving candidates second chance.
The Indian Railways will fill up over one lakh vacant posts by March-April next year.
The railways received around 2.27 crore applications for about 1.10 lakh vacancies it had advertised.
The examination for the posts, including those in the Railway Protection Force, would be conducted in the months of September, October and November this year.