NEW DELHI: At a time when the issue of unemployment has taken centre stage comes news that more than 2 lakh technical and non-technical posts have remained vacant in 68 divisions of Indian Railways for years. To be precise, 2,02,652 posts are still 'unfilled' under the technical-safety and non-technical categories.
According to official data, obtained by The New Indian Express, the Delhi division under the Northern Railway zone has the highest number of 6,101 vacancies under safety and technical categories followed by the Mumbai division under Central Railway with 5,670 vacancies and the Praygaraj division with 4,268 vacancies in the same categories.
In total, there are 1,11,003 posts vacant out of a total of 6,28,200 sanctioned posts under the safety and technical categories and 91,649 posts out of a total of 4,52,825 sanctioned posts under non-technical categories.
After Delhi, Mumbai and the Praygaraj divisions, the Sealdah division in West Bengal has 3407 posts under safety and technical categories that remained to be filled followed by the Chennai division with 3,268 vacancies.
The Bilaspur division has vacancies for 2922 posts under the safety and technical categories, followed by the Firozpur division with 3231 vacancies and the Howrah division with 2328 vacancies.
Recently, Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw, while giving a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, had admitted to this glut of vacancies existing in the Indian Railways. The minister said that instructions had been issued to the zonal railway divisions for filling up the vacancies, especially in the safety and technical categories.
"Apart from this, the recruitment process for filling up of 6865 vacancies of station masters notified by the Railway Recruitment Boards(RRBs) is at examination stage," the railway minister claimed.