Railwaymen in Madurai Railway Division have expressed shock over an abnormally high number of candidates from North India clearing an online exam for the recruitment of goods train guards.
For 96 posts in Southern Railway, covering Tamil Nadu, Kerala and part of Andhra Pradesh, only five from Tamil Nadu have cleared the exam.
The recruitment for promotion was based on a general departmental competitive examination conducted online Railway Recruitment Cell, Chennai.
All those employees who are graduates and employed as pointsman, shunting master and few other categories in the zone were eligible to take the examination.
“The fact that it was conducted for two days shows the huge number of people who took the test,” divisional secretary of Dakshin Railway Employees Union R. Sankaranarayanan said.
One of the candidates, who did not clear the examination, attributed the “lopsided” results to the online mode of exam as it did not happen with physical question papers.
Madurai MP Su. Venkatesan said he could not reach the Chief Personnel Officer of Southern Railway to get a clarification.
“That only five persons from over 3,000 candidates from Tamil Nadu could clear the examination raises doubts and gives an impression that candidates from southern States are ignored in recruitment,” he said.
Not the first time
A similar controversy broke out when most of the candidates selected in recruitment for 620 Group D posts in Madurai divison were from North Indian States in September 2019
Then, the Railway officials had attributed it to the Centre’s reservation policy that provided 7.5% reservation for Scheduled Tribes.
Scheduled Tribes in Tamil Nadu accounted for only 1% while it was higher in States such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
Hence, they got more jobs in the South, a Railway official said.
