The Indian Railways is all set to host examinations for what is known as, one of the world’s most massive recruitment drive on August 9. About one lakh vacancies will be filled through this examination in which reportedly, two crore applicants applied. Now to conduct the entrance peacefully, keeping the policies intact, the government has adopted a tech solution. Yes, none other then tech giant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on behalf of the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) will conduct the examination for Assistant Loco Pilot (ALP) and Technician Posts. The event has a major distinction because it is the first government job exam which will be conducted by a private company. Indian Railways Justifies Why ALP & Technician Candidates Are Allotted Centres Outside Their States. 

Over the years, in any recruitment or national level entrance exams, the cheating menace has been a significant threat for organisers. To get in a full-time government job, bribery evolved to be a common factor. A lot of measures have been introduced and adopted which sadly could not put an end to this. Now, the online recruitment to be conducted by TCS is expected to bring transparency to government hiring ignoring charges of corruption, bias and inefficiency. According to a Business Standard report, TCS will hold the test through its recruitment division, TCS ion while two other private companies would manage the back-end operations.

It was in 2015 when the railways had tied up with TCS to experiment with a system to conduct its recruitment exams online to introduce transparency. The pilot version ran on TCS ion—cloud platform. This exam management tool allows secured question paper creation and distribution. TCS also conducts a few of India’s coveted entrance tests such as Common Aptitude Test (CAT), the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and All India Engineering Entrance Exam (AIEEE). In 2016, TCS evaluated 85 million candidates. From its growth in education, TCS is now selling its ion cloud platform in many foreign countries such as Japan and Ireland.

As released by RRB, the board this year has received 4.74 million applicants against the 25,502 vacancies in ALPs and technicians (Level-2) and 19 million against 62,907 openings in Level 1 (erstwhile Group D). The first stage of the exam is slated to conduct online on August 9 at various exam centres across the nation.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 02, 2018 02:07 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).