Railway Ministry to recruit 6,374 technicians to fill vacant posts across all zones

New Delhi: The Railway Ministry has decided to fill up 6,374 vacant positions in 51 categories of technical posts, including signal and telecommunication department, across all 17 railway zones and various production units in the country. Earlier on June 10, the ministry wrote to all zonal railways and said that it assessed the vacancies of technicians placed by them in the online human resource management system and “approved to issue Centralised Employment Notification for 6,374 vacancies of technicians in 51 categories for the year 2025”.

The ministry has urged all zones to revise the vacant positions in all 51 categories and upload them on the online system in consultation with the chairman of Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), Bengaluru. Nodal RRB will consolidate the indents placed by the Railways/PUs (production units) and issue the Centralised Employment Notification, the ministry said.

The vacant positions across various categories, according to officials, are much more than the ministry's current initiative. This move will, however, help reduce the pressure, they said. The Indian Railway S&T Maintainers Signal and Telecom Union (IRSTMU) has welcomed the decision and called it a right move in the safety of rail operations.

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The union had earlier written to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and requested him “to fill up the vacancies of Signal and Telecom Department in all categories of Group C posts to strengthen the S&T maintenance activities”. “The last recruitment in the Signal and Telecom Department was done in 2017 and thousands of posts are lying vacant for eight years. So, the Railway Recruitment Board should be directed to complete the recruitment process as soon as possible,” IRSTMU general secretary Alok Chandra Prakash had said in his letter dated June 3.

Prakash opposed one of the ministry’s recent decisions to recruit S&T staff on a contractual basis due to an increase of workload on the existing employee strength. He argued that S&T work is crucial for safe rail operations and allowing contractual staff to become familiar with crucial safety operations might make it vulnerable to sabotage in future.