Indian Railways has conducted the world’s largest online examination at 351 centres for 92 lakh candidates to fill up over 14,000 vacancies in various categories as part of the ambitious recruitment reforms. The three-phase online examination covering preliminary, written and aptitude and typing skill test is a first of its kind for the state-run transporter.
This green initiative replaced bulky, multi-lingual question booklets with online tests thus helped save four lakh trees and 319 crore paper sheets.
Because of the digital transformation, various tests stages could be completed in a day each whereas in conventional mode these would have taken about two months time. The online test has resulted in a substantial saving of time and resources while at the same time bringing transparency in the recruitment process. Describing it as the “largest online examination in the world”, the railway official said that in order to ensure complete transparency, the railways have introduced the system of showing answer papers online to examinees one week after the examination.