The Indian Railways will now use Google maps to allot the exam centers within a 300km radius to save travel time and that will link the location of the students appearing in their exams. For decades, students taking Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) tests have complained about test centers being far distant from their homes, resulting in not just long-distance travel but also fees for hotels and meals.
"We are using Google Maps to connect each candidate's pin code to an exam center within 300 kilometers of their home. In addition, we are ensuring that the centers have convenient access to various forms of transportation such as buses and trains. If this succeeds, we would be able to address one of the most common and persistent concerns of applicants, "According to a top official.
Around 60,000 applicants will take the test at around 90 locations for 7,026 positions. "As of now, we have been able to accommodate around 99 percent of applicants who have been assigned centers within a 300-kilometer range, while 100 percent of female candidates have been assigned centers within a 400-kilometer range," the official added.
After the RRB issued the exam city URLs for the most recent round of examinations, most applicants resorted to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction with the locations assigned to them.
A Twitter user from Kolkata said she had been awarded a center in Karnataka, while a candidate from Bengaluru claimed she had been assigned a center in Ranchi, which is around 1,900 kilometers distant. Another candidate stated that her center was 900 kilometers away from her house.
According to authorities, applicants will be assigned to centers within the range, although they may be neighbors with decent connections.
However, because there are just a few exam centers in the north-eastern regions, the Railways is having difficulty accommodating applicants within a 300-km radius, they claimed.
