Patna: Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi has welcomed the railway ministry's decision to drop the mandatory Industrial Training Institute (ITI) degree for Group D vacancies. Sources said railway minister Piyush Goyal removed the criteria on Thursday.

After Thursday's decision, required educational qualification for Level I (Group D) will be Class 10 or ITI. As per a railway department press release, the railway has also announced for exemption in examination fees. Thus, Rs 400 will be refunded to candidates, who had paid Rs 500 as examination fees, if they sit for the exam. Also, question papers will be in 15 languages and the candidates can now sign in any language instead of just Hindi or English.

Last week, the railway ministry announced the recruitment process for 90,000 Group C and D posts. The Group C vacancies were for the posts of assistant loco pilots and technicians and Group D for track maintainer, gangman, gateman, porter and others.

In both categories, candidates had to have passed Class X and have an ITI degree. Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi called Union railway minister Piyush Goyal and thanked him of removing the mandatory ITI degree in Group D vacancies. "The decision will benefits lakhs of Bihar students, as they will be eligible to apply in railway posts," Sushil said.

As several Bihar districts are witnessing protests in the past several days, with students demanding that the Union government remove mandatory ITI degree in Group D vacancies, several state BJP leaders, including deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, had requested Piyush Goyal to drop ITI degree from being mandatory for those applying for Group D jobs.

The candidates have welcomed the decision, Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Janipur in rural Patna, said: "The railway decision will benefit millions of students, especially from states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where a large number of candidates sit for the railway examination."

Out of nearly 90,000 posts, the railway vacancies in Group D are 62,900 while in Group C there are vacancies for 26,500 posts. On Thursday too there were reports of students protesting in different parts of the state, including Patna, where around a 100 students staged a protest at a railway track near Kankarbagh. They even pelted passing trains on the route with stones.

The agitation was called off after the police intervened. The Centre had last week revised the upper age limit for groups C and D in all categories.