New Delhi, Sep 29 (PTI) The finance ministry has asked public sector banks (PSBs) to expedite the process of filling pending vacancies, sources said.

The ministry had reviewed the vacancies in PSBs earlier this month and advised them to take action to fill them.

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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday had directed PSBs to fill the backlog vacancies of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in a time-bound manner.

The total employees strength of PSBs peaked at 8.86 lakh during 2012-13. It declined to 7.80 lakh during 2020-21.

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Banks have started issuing advertisements for recruitment. The country's biggest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has issued advertisements for recruitment of 1,673 probationary officers. Of this, 1,600 are regular vacancies while 73 are backlog cases.

Due to COVID-19, the recruitment process got impacted and as a result there are some backlogs which will be filled in due course of time, a senior PSB official said.

Besides, Central Bank of India has issued advertisements seeking applications for filling 110 specialist officers vacancies.

At the same time, the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) has initiated the process for recruitment of about 6,500 probationary officers/management trainees through a common exam for the various state-owned banks.

The participating banks include Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, Canara Bank, Central Bank of India, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Punjab National Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, UCO Bank and Union Bank of India.

Most of the recruitment is done by IBPS while specialist officers' recruitment is conducted by individual banks.

In addition, financial institutions like the Small Industries Development of India (Sidbi) have also invited applications for the positions of programme executives and programme leads, among others.

About 4,334 new branches were opened during 2020. However, it came down to 3,064 in 2021, as per the 'Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2020-21'.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)