Angry mobs in eastern India set fire to empty train coaches and disrupted rail traffic in protests against alleged problems in railway recruiting, which saw police use tear gas and baton charges to brutally disperse crowds.
Since the beginning of the week, Bihar has been on edge over claims by young job aspirants that an admission exam for the government-run rail sector was unjustly handled.
The job applicants allege anomalies in recruiting by the massive railways department, which employs over 1.2 million people and is one of the world’s largest employers.
Crowds pelted stones at train cars, blocked tracks, and burned effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Monday’s protests, which began on a modest scale but quickly grew.
Protesters claim that the test results for various job categories revealed that the same people’s names appeared many times, implying that unsuccessful candidates were wrongfully eliminated.
They said that millions of individuals have registered for 150,000 jobs in Bihar and the neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh.
Ashutosh Singh, a protester in Bihar, claimed, “The recruitment procedure was not transparent.” “A number of the chosen candidates’ names were placed in numerous categories, which is quite unfair.”
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Railways announced the formation of a committee to investigate the candidates’ concerns. It had previously stated that people found guilty of vandalism and destruction of public property could be prevented from applying for railway positions, in addition to facing other legal consequences.
More than a dozen people have been arrested for taking part in the protests that have erupted at railway stations around Bihar and neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.
Authorities in Patna, Bihar’s capital, have filed police complaints against 400 nameless people and six institutes involved in training students for railways and other employment, according to senior official Chandrashekhar Singh.
Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, have punished six police officers for using “excessive force” on protesters in Prayagraj, where municipal elections begin next month.
Three civilians were also detained, according to senior police officer Ajay Kumar.
Police have also been chastised for their harsh tactics, with images on social media showing cops barging into the houses of suspected demonstrators and lashing them.
In a tweet criticising the incident, senior opposition leader Priyanka Gandhi said, “The youth have the right to talk against unemployment.”
Joblessness has long been a thorn in the Indian economy’s side, with jobless rates at their highest since the 1970s, even before the COVID-19 outbreak wreaked havoc on the country’s economy.
According to the Reuters news agency, India’s jobless rate has topped the global rate in five of the last six years.
This week, student organisations have called for additional protests, mostly in Bihar, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
