Reserve Bank of India has officially postponed interviews scheduled to be conducted in May 2020. RBI is the central financial institution of the country and the top authority controlling the issue and supply of the Indian currency. The notice of the postponement came in at the official website of the Bank in the form of a short yet precise announcement. RBI Grade B recruitment interviews were scheduled to be conducted between 04 and 07 May 2020. However, now that the Central Government has announced the extension of the ongoing country-wide lockdown up to May 03, 2020, it is evident that there is no way RBI can conduct the interviews as scheduled. In what is being called as the sequel to the first phase lockdown, the extended lockdown has made authorities of major government recruitment bodies in India frown over the existing schedule of exams and interviews.
The screenshot of the notice is given below.
The bank earlier conducted the first and second phase examinations of the Grade B Officer recruitment program in the months of November and December 2019. These examinations were conducted on 01 and 02 December 2020. Qualifiers were eagerly waiting for the final interviews to happen before they could be appointed to the 199 vacancies announced by the central bank.
The postponement of the recruitment interviews, although undesirable for thousands of applicants from all over India, is the need of the hour to contain the spread of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). COVID-19 pandemic has now affected more than a million people all over the world. The Indian government has been swift and decisive in imposing a nation-wide lockdown as soon as symptoms of the pandemic affecting the country began to surface. In the first phase, the lockdown was imposed only up to April 15, 2020. However, in more recent announcements, the Prime Minister revealed that the lockdown is remaining intact till at least May 03, 2020. The news comes as a major set back to all those recruiters who perhaps anticipated situations to be normalized by May 2020.
RBI’s postponement notice clearly cites the Coronavirus pandemic as the only cause that drove the financial institute to withdraw the dates of the interview and hint toward an expected rescheduling of the dates. As of now, the interviews stand deferred indefinitely till further orders are issued. Such orders are communicated through the official RBI website i.e. rbi.org.in. It is expected that RBI may reschedule and announce the new dates as soon as situations related to Coronavirus outbreak in India are normalized and the lockdown is removed.
