Rrb - The Railway Recruitment Board

By Author: Nitu Sharma
Total Articles: 57
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The RRB is the Railway Recruitment Board, recruiting Group ‘C’ and Group ‘D’ staff in world’s second largest civil employer – Indian Railways. It constitutes 20 railway boards in Indian Railways with approximately 1.36 million employees serving railway in India dedicatedly. These recruitments to Group ‘C’ and Group ‘D’ are done by these nineteen railway boards for 17 zones headed by a GM (General Manager). The RRB is now controlled by the RRCB, Railway Recruitment Control Board under the Ministry of Railways.

In 1942, there was an experiment done in which an institution of a service commission with a chairman and two members for recruitment of Subordinate staff in the north-west railway was established. It was later reviewed in 1945 for Bombay, followed by Calcutta, Madras and Lucknow. These commissions started to recruit class III staff and also tender advice to General Manager for dealing with appeals from subordinate staff on disciplinary matters. More full-fledged service commissions were subsequently opened until 1985.

In January 1985, all Railway Service Commissions were rechristened ...
... to Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs). Thereafter, all boards became Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) which now turned out to be nineteen railway boards in Indian Railways.

Again, in 1998, the Ministry of Railways set up the RRCB i.e., Railway Recruitment Control Board with objectives to formulate the policy regarding railway recruitment procedures, monitor the activities of all RRBs, evaluate the performance of railway boards and organize & manage information system for monitoring the work done by the Railway Recruitment Boards.

The Railway Recruitment Boards comprise RRB Chandigarh, RRB Muzaffarpur, RRB Mumbai, RRB Secunderabad, RRB Patna, RRB Kolkata, RRB Guwahati, RRB Gorakhapur, RRB Ahmedabad, RRB Chennai, RRB Bangalore, RRB Bhopal, RRB Thiruvananthapuram, RRB Bilaspur, RRB Ajmer, RRB Hajipur, RRB Malda, RRB Bhubaneswar, RRB Jammu and RRB Allahabad.

The RRB (Railway Recruitment Board) call for eligible applicants through employment news (Rojgar Samachar), a publication of the Government of India. The notification is also published on the Internet website. The railway recruitment board then scrutinizes the candidature. Call letters are sent a month in advance to eligible candidates for a written examination. Examinations are held across various parts of the country. If the number of candidates is large, the qualified candidates are called for the main written exam. The railway board prepares a merit list entirely based on the exam results.

In most categories of railway jobs, there is no interview taken place, except a few, after the written examination. Certain categories hold a skill test or psychological test, followed by a medical test.

The RRB gives reservation as per the rules to certain castes/communities such as SC (Scheduled Caste), ST (Scheduled Tribes), OBC (Other Backward Communities), Ex-servicemen, etc.

The successful candidates are sent for appointments through registered post.

There are 291 Training centers of Indian Railways located across the country. However, the rest of training of all cadres recruited to Indian Railways is entrusted and shared between six centralized training institutes.

The overall policy guidelines for all RRBs (Railway Recruitment Boards in Indian Railways are laid down by Railway Recruitment Control Board (RRCB), New Delhi.

Author Info

Author is an experience writer in irctc and RRB articles. Many articles on RRB like RRB Patna and RRB Ajmer had been published online.