In a mega employment push, the government has decided to recruit 10,00,000 people in different central government departments and ministries by December 2023. After the announcement, PMO tweeted, “PM Narendra Modi reviewed the status of human resources in all departments and ministries and instructed that recruitment of 10,00,000 people be done in a mission mode in the next 1.5 years”. Officials say this is one of the biggest recruitment drives that has been undertaken by the central government in recent decades.
The recruitment drive will be on full mode till the run-up to the polls. Individual ministries and departments will come up with number of vacancies to be filled. On April 2, PM Modi had a meeting with secretaries of central ministers where he has mooted the idea to give maximum employment in public and private sectors.
Nearly 70% of such recruitments will be done by the home ministry for filling vacancies in paramilitary and police forces; railway ministry for technical and nontechnical staff; education and health ministries for faculty and non-faculty staff; postal department; and the defence ministry. The move gains importance in the light of the opposition trying to turn “vacancies” in government departments and unemployment in general into a stick to beat the government with and was seen by political circles as a move to repair a vulnerability.
Sources said the home and railway ministries can quickly start the recruitment. The railway ministry has started the process to recruit 148,000 permanent employees in the next one year and there are nearly 298,000 vacancies across the railway zones. “Even achieving the next one year’s target means nearly three-and-half times more recruitment of what we do annually on average. In the past eight years, there has been an annual average of 43,600 recruitments,” said a source.
However, it was the education ministry which was first off the block, with Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan losing no time in announcing a plan.
