The Indian Railways has maintained that it has undertaken a massive recruitment drive to appoint about 1.52 lakh Group C employees, which also includes loco pilots.

This was in response to the questions raised by the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge about three lakh vacant posts in the Railways and the shortage of loco pilots.

The Congress President in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised several issues including slow fund utilisation on safety related works like track renewal.

Railways said that in the past nine years upto May 2023, more than 4.58 lakh candidates have been selected for appointment in the Railways.

With about 42,000 further appointment offers also being made, the total numbers will become more than 5 lakh as against about 4.11 lakh selected for appointment in ten years prior to 2014.

Kharge has pointed out the Railway Board itself has recently admitted that loco pilots have had to work longer hours than mandated due to manpower shortage.

"Loco pilots are crucial to safety and their overburden is proving to be the main cause of accidents. Why have their positions not been filled yet?" Kharge asked.

The Railways said 1,10,636 candidates have already been offered appointment through five Rozgar Melas organized by the Central Government and another 28,000 are being offered appointment in next Rozgar Mela.

Remaining appointments will be covered in future Rozgar Melas. These offers include about 6,800 in Station Master Category, about 5,500 in Assistant Loco Pilot category and 43,370 in Track Maintainer category.

Quoting the CAG observations about the safety fund, the Congress leader said the report also highlights that funding for the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) has been reduced by a massive 79 per cent.

"It was claimed during the budget presentation that about Rs 20,000 crore would be available annually, but this was not done. Why were the required funds not allocated for track renewal work? Is this not being callous about the safety of passengers?," he asked.

The Railways maintained that contrary to the statements being made, it has ensured that the RRSK fund is fully utilised. The Railways spent more than Rs 1 lakh crore from 2017 to 2022 in safety related works.

The Railways also highlighted that the validity of the RRSK was further extended by another five years from 2022-23.

On the track renewal, which is an important component of safety, the Railways has incurred heavy expenditure on it. From Rs 8,884 crore in 2017-18, the expenditure on track renewal increased to Rs 13,522 crore in 2020-21 and Rs 16,558 crore in 2021-22.

Indian Railways is one of the largest employers in the world with about 11.6 lakh Group C employees as on April, 2023. All these employees are regular employees.

The prescribed reservation for SC, ST, OBC and EWS candidates is followed in all recruitments. All efforts have been made to fill up Gazetted Cadre vacancies. 150 officers are likely to join soon through Civil Services Exam 2022 and another 150 will become available through 2023 exam.

Similarly 829 Group B Gazetted officers have been selected since December, 2022 and another promotional exam for filling up 392 Group B Gazetted vacancies is being conducted on 25 June 2023.

Occurrence and filling up of vacancies is a continuous process. Indian Railways is also modernizing itself by bringing new technologies for maintenance and operations, in order to improve safety.

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