NEW DELHI: Congress leader from Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, today thanked Railway Minister Piyush Goyal for re-introducing Malayalam as a language option in railway recruitment examinations.
The national transporter on February 20 said it had reinstated Malayalam in the list of languages that applicants can choose as the medium of examination, following protests from candidates and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan demanding that aspirants be allowed to write in Malayalam.
"Glad to learn from @PiyushGoyal that following my complaint to him on February 16, Malayalam has again been made an available option for recruitment of Level I (formerly Group D) posts in @indianrailway__ and 1.47 lakh candidates have since availed of it," Tharoor tweeted.
The Indian Railways will now conduct its exams in six regional languages - Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Odia, Telugu and Bengali. A previous notification had excluded Malayalam.
Tharoor's remarks came on a day the ministry said it has received more than 2.3 crore applications for nearly 90,000 jobs it had advertised earlier this year.
He represents Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Lok Sabha.
Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) published two fresh notifications - on February 3 and February 10 - for a total of 89,409 vacancies.
Till now, it has received 47.56 lakh applications for 26,502 vacancies of assistant loco-pilots and technicians, and another 1.90 crore for 62,907 vacancies of Level-1 (erstwhile Group 'D') posts.
This takes the total number of applications received for 89,409 posts to a whopping 2.37 crore.