By Arun Kumar Das

New Delhi, Dec 29 (IANS): After assistant loco pilots, technicians and gangmen, Indian Railways is expecting another heavy rush of applicants as it will soon recruit over 14,000 junior engineers (JE) in mostly safety-related semi-supervisory posts.

The national transporter will offer job opportunities to diploma holders in all streams for which the notification will be issued soon for receiving applications between January 2 and 31, 2019.

With this, the total posts offered in various segments in the rail sector will be in excess of 140,000 in 2018.

Currently, railways is in the midst of filling up 64,000 posts of assitsant loco pilots (ALP) and technicians and 62,000 gangmen, for which the first phase of the recruitment examination is over.

There were total over 2 crore applications for these posts.

"The second phase test followed by document verification for ALPs and technicians will begin shortly," said a senior Railway Ministry official adding: "For gangmen, there will be a physical test in February."

The recruitment test for JEs is expected to commence from March next year after the scrutiny of applications is completed.

Depending upon the number of applications and their places of residence, the railways will decide on the venues of the examination centres.

Though the JE posts state of diploma as the minimum qualification, a considerable number of BTech graduates are also expected to apply.

The selected JEs will be responsible for maintaining coaches, electrical services and overhead electrical equipment, among others.

Like for other posts, the entire exercise - beginning from filling applications to appearing for recruitment tests - will be computer-based, saving a substantial amount of paper.

The fee has been kept at Rs 500 and Rs 250 to keep out non-serious applicants who apply but fail to appear for the test.

For general candidates, the examination fee is Rs 500, of which Rs 400 will be returned to the candidate after he or she appears in the examination.

The fee is Rs 250 for SC/ST, women, those who are physically challenged, applicants from economically weaker sections and ex-servicemen. The full amount will be returned to the candidates after appearing in the examination.

A total of 2.37 crore had applied for 1.26 lakh posts ranging from ALPs, technicians to gangmen and trackmen.

Earlier, recruitment examinations used to be conducted manually, but the Railways had to abandon the system and opt for the online mode after a few instances of question papers being leaked.

The online test has resulted in substantial saving of time and resources while also bringing transparency in the recruitment process, the official said.