The Railways said that around 2.4 crore candidtates have applied for 1.4 lakh vacancies in Indian Railways for various categories of staff to be hired by the Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs). A statement issued by the Ministry of Railways said, "It may be noted that RRBs had issued three centralised employment notifications for NTPC categories, isolated and ministerial categories and Level-1 categories for a total of about 1.4 lakh vacancies for various categories of staff."

"Against these employment notifications, more than 2.4 crore candidates have applied," it said, adding that the national transporter has made requisite preparations for smooth conduct of computer based tests (CBTs) which is scheduled from December 15 onwards. It said that the details of schedule of the CBTs will be uploaded on the websites of RRBs in due course. It said that the railways had notified three types of vacancies -- 35,208 for NTPC (non-technical popular categories like guards, office clerks, commercial clerks etc.), 1,663 for Isolated and Ministerial categories (steno and teaches etc.) and 1,03,769 for Level-1 vacancies (track maintainers, pointsman etc).