An extended one month window was provided to enable the Divyangjan categories included in the revised Act, including candidates with identified Multiple Disabilities (MD) to apply for the examination. Around 1.17 crore candidates including around 1.54 lakh Divyangjan appeared at the Computer based written tests. The number of vacancies reserved for Divyangjan is over 2400, with around equal number reserved for the four Disability categories of Locomotor Disability (LD), Visually Impaired (VI), Hearing Impaired (HI), and Multiple Disability (MD). MD refers to candidates having more than one Disability among the other three Categories of LD, VI and HI.
The vacant posts notified for any Zonal Railway are being filled in as per merit position among those who have opted for that zonal Railway and have secured the minimum qualifying threshold marks and qualified in the Physical Efficiency Tests (PET) conducted by the Railway Recruitment Cells (RRC) of the respective Zonal Railways. Divyangjan candidates have not only been fully exempted from PET, but have been accorded 2 marks relaxation in minimum qualifying cut-offs as well. Their final selection, subject to Document Verification and Medical Examination, is therefore based on their merit position in the Computer Based Tests for their Disability category and Zonal Railway they had opted for.
While over 1025 Divyangjan candidates have already been finally selected and several more candidates’ cases are under verification/medical examination, it has been observed that the MD category has remained mostly unfilled in all Zonal Railways. It is a fact that this Category has been included as per the revised Act fairly recently and the CEN 02/2018 is among the earliest recruitment notifications to incorporate this Disability Category.
In this context, several Divyangjan candidates & groups have represented that due to unfamiliarity with the revised Categorisation and application protocol, they have filled in only Single Disability (either LD or VI or HI) option in the application form, instead of two or more of the Disabilities that they are affected with
