Prasad urges Vaishnaw to ease students’ apprehensions on recruitment

New Delhi: Former Union Minister and Member of Parliament from Patna Sahib, Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday spoke to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, requesting him to ease swiftly apprehensions about alleged irregularities in the recent recruitment tests conducted by the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) that has led to massive protests in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Videos of students resorting to protests and vandalism and subsequent action by the police that have been termed as “excessive” went viral earlier last week. This led to all Opposition parties, including the Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in Bihar to allege that the Central government was “anti-youth”.
Prasad also requested Vaishnaw to prepare a roadmap to ensure that such things did not take place in the future. He also appealed to the protesting students, who have vandalised Railway property, including setting train coaches on fire, to maintain peace as the Central government had already formed a high powered five-member committee to look into the allegations and issues raised by the students.
The committee, after talking to the concerned stakeholders, will submit its recommendations by 4 March.
The former law and IT minister also urged the railway minister to ensure that no unnecessary repressive measures are taken against the protesting students, who are mostly from weak financial backgrounds, spend a lot of time and money to prepare for these exams.
Violence had erupted in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh over alleged irregularities in the Railways’ Non-Technical Popular Categories (NTPC) and Level 1 exams following which Railways suspended the recruitment process.
The protests had begun after several students claimed that there were discrepancies in the RRB recruitment process. The students claimed that the government decided to conduct two computer-based tests (CBT) for the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) Non-Technical Popular Categories (NTPC), despite the same not being mentioned in the job notification. The results for CBT-I of Group-D were released on 14 January, shortlisting candidates for CBT-II.
They said that the government had mentioned only one exam in the notification while claiming that it was unfair on the part of the RRB to ask them to appear for another examination.
The Railways, though has refuted the allegations and said the notification had mentioned that there would be a second stage of the examination (CBT-II).