New Delhi: The Railways filled up as many as 294,115 vacancies in the past five years, of which more than 90 per cent of the candidates were recruited in the safety and operational categories, Union Minister of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
Occurrence and filling up of vacancies is a continuous process with the Indian Railways, considering its size, distribution and criticality of operation, the minister said.

"Adequate and suitable manpower is provided to cater to the regular operations, changes in technology, mechanisation and innovative practices. The vacancies are filled up primarily by placement of indents by Railways with Recruitment agencies as per operational and technological requirements," the Minister informed the Lower House.

The minister further apprised the House that two major competitive Computer Based Tests (CBT), involving more than 2.37 crore candidates, have been conducted recently to fill up 1.39 lakh vacancies for non-gazetted posts. Similarly, CBT for CEN RRC 01/2019 (Level 1) was conducted for more than 1.11 crore candidates in five phases last year across 191 cities and 551 centres in 15 languages.

"Periodical review of Running Staff is done through crew review exercises by Zonal Railways as per delegations of power. This crew review is done on annual/six monthly basis by Zonal Railways, which means virtually every year crew review is done," the minister said in his written reply.

During the period from 2014-15 to 2023-24, 489,696 candidates have been recruited by the Railway Recruitment agencies against various group C posts (including level-1 and security-related posts).