Chennai: Malayalam has been removed from the list of languages for the railway recruitment board group D grade exams.
At the same time, most regional languages find their place in the list. With this, thousands of applicants from Kerala won't be able to write the exam in Malayalam.
The board has started receiving online applications from those who have basic qualification of SSLC, NCVT or a recognized ITI certificate. Different recruitment boards are looking to fill 62,907 posts.
The railway recruitment board tests used to be held in English, Hindi and Urdu languages. When Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister, she had decided to include regional languages to the list. It was first implemented in the group D posts and exams were conducted in languages including Malayalam. But, in the new list, Malayalam is out.
Now, apart from English, Hindi and Urdu, applicants can write the exam in Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Konkani, Odiya, Assamese and Manipuri. There are 2,979 posts to be filled under the Chennai board, which covers the Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad divisions.
But in Chennai, the regional languages that have been included are Tamil and Telugu only. In south India, apart from Chennai, Bengaluru and Secunderabad recruitment boards are also conducting exams.
In Bengaluru, candidates can write exams in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Konkani languages. In Secunderabad, the languages allowed are Telugu, Marathi, Kannada and Odiya. The last date to submit the application is March 12.
