NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Railways has decided to conduct all departmental promotional examinations for its 13 lakh employees through the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), using a Computer-Based Test (CBT) system.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting held on Wednesday at the Railway Board. The Ministry of Railways has developed a foolproof CBT system through sustained efforts of over the last seven years to ensure zero chances of malpractice through any form of communication during the examination.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, a technocrat-turned politician, took rounds of review of the railway’s indigenously developed- CBT before deciding to conduct all departmental promotional examinations by RRB through the CBT system.
Confirming this to the newspaper, a senior railway official shared, “All railway zones (18) will create a calendar for the examination. All examinations will be conducted strictly according to this calendar. This decision has been made after extensive experience with transparent, fair, and highly appreciated exams conducted by the RRB in recent years”.
According to official data, from 2015 to the present, over 7 crore candidates have been examined through this highly advanced railway’s CBT system without any incidents of paper leakage, impersonation, remote logins, or use of spy devices.
“Finally, the railways have made this historic decision to now conduct all departmental promotional examinations through the RRB using CBT,” remarked an official, adding that information about the examination city to the railway employees appearing in promotional exams or other candidates appearing in railways various recruitment examinations will be disclosed ten days prior to the exam.
“Not only this, after sharing information about the examination city, the venue or centre of examination will be made available to candidates only four days before the exam date to ensure a completely fair and transparent examination,” the official continued.
A key feature of the CBT system is that examination centres are allocated through a computerised randomised process, eliminating any manual intervention and preventing any attempts to influence the allocation of centres in favour of particular candidates. As part of the examination process, biometric attendance will be taken for all employees appearing for the departmental promotional exams before they are allowed entry into the exam halls.
Another notable feature of the CBT is that applications will include a QR code to detect fraudulent applications, while admit cards will feature a barcode to verify the authenticity of candidates.