RRB NTPC Graduate Recruitment 2026 (CEN 06/2026) — 3,548 Posts, Last Date 6 November

The Railway Recruitment Boards have opened 3,548 graduate-level NTPC vacancies under Centralised Employment Notice CEN 06/2026. The online form is live right now and closes on 6 November 2026 at 11:59 PM.

Any degree works. There is no subject restriction on any of the four posts. If you are a graduate under 33, you are eligible — and 2,750 of the 3,548 posts are a single job, Goods Train Manager, which means your odds here are far better than the raw vacancy number suggests.

The four posts, and which one you should actually want

You fill one form and pick your post preferences inside it. So it is worth knowing what you are choosing between before you open the form.

Chief Commercial cum Ticket Supervisor pays the most — Level 6, Rs. 35,400 basic instead of Rs. 29,200 — but there are only 127 seats, so the cut-off will be brutal.

Goods Train Manager is where the vacancies are. The catch is the medical standard: A2 is the strictest in this notification, because the job is a running-staff role on freight trains. Your distant vision has to be 6/9 in both eyes without glasses, and you must clear colour vision, binocular vision and night vision tests. If you wear spectacles, you cannot take this post. Read that again before you make it your first preference.

Senior Clerk cum Typist and Junior Accounts Assistant cum Typist are office jobs at the same Level 5 pay, with the mildest medical standard (C2) and fixed working hours. For most candidates — and especially for anyone who wears glasses or wants a desk posting — these are the sensible preferences even though there are fewer seats.

One genuinely good piece of news this cycle: the Typing Skill Test has been dispensed with. The two typist posts normally require you to pass a typing test at 30 words per minute in English or 25 in Hindi. For CEN 06/2026 that stage has been removed, so a slow typist is no longer shut out of 671 posts.

Dates — and the two deadlines people confuse

The closing date and the fee-payment date are not the same. You must submit the form by 6 November, but you get until 8 November to complete the payment. That two-day grace exists for failed transactions — it is not permission to start on 7 November. If you have not submitted by 6 November at 11:59 PM, the fee window is useless to you.

The modification window of 9 to 18 November is the part most candidates do not know about. After the form closes you get ten days to correct mistakes in your submitted application. Use it to check your category, your date of birth and your post preferences. Corrections usually carry a small fee, and some fields — like your RRB zone — normally cannot be changed, so do not rely on it for the big decisions.

Are you eligible? Three checks

1. Qualification. A degree from a recognised university, or equivalent, for all four posts. Your stream does not matter — BA, BCom, BSc, BTech, BBA all count equally.

The hard rule: you must already hold the degree on or before 6 November 2026. Candidates awaiting their final result are not eligible. This single line disqualifies thousands of final-year students every cycle. If your result is pending, this notification is not for you — wait for the next CEN.

2. Age. 18 to 33 years, calculated as on 1 January 2027, not as on the application date. That later cut-off date is in your favour — it gives you a few extra months compared with the usual 1 July reckoning.

Relaxations are also available to ex-servicemen, serving railway employees and widowed or judicially separated women. Your OBC-NCL certificate must be in the prescribed central-government format and must be current — a certificate that has lapsed will be rejected at document verification even if it was valid when you applied.

3. Medical fitness. Covered above. A2 for Goods Train Manager, B2 for CCTS, C2 for the two typist posts. Pick your preferences around your eyesight, not around the salary.

Fee — and why you get most of it back

Railways is one of the few recruiters that refunds your fee, and the condition is simple: you must actually sit for CBT 1. Skip the exam and you forfeit the whole amount. So the real cost of applying is about Rs. 100 for a general candidate and nothing for everyone else — provided you turn up.

The refund is credited to the bank account you enter in the application, which is why that field matters. A wrong IFSC or a closed account is the most common reason refunds fail, and chasing it afterwards takes months.

Selection process — four stages

1. CBT 1 — common screening test for all posts. Only a shortlist goes forward.
2. CBT 2 — the stage that decides your merit.
3. Document Verification
4. Medical Examination

CBT 1 is a filter, not a scoreboard. Its marks do not count towards your final rank. All it does is decide who gets to write CBT 2 — usually about 20 times the number of vacancies. Clear it and the slate is wiped clean.

That has a practical consequence. People spend months chasing a very high CBT 1 score, which buys them nothing. What CBT 1 rewards is speed and accuracy on easy questions. What CBT 2 rewards is depth. Plan your preparation in that order.

CBT 1 — 100 questions, 100 marks, 90 minutes

CBT 2 — 120 questions, 120 marks, 90 minutes

Both stages carry negative marking of one-third of a mark for every wrong answer. Three wrong answers wipe out one correct answer. Candidates with a scribe get 120 minutes instead of 90.

Minimum qualifying marks: 40% for UR and EWS, 30% for OBC-NCL and SC, 25% for ST. These are floors, not cut-offs. The real cut-off is set by competition and sits far above them — clearing 40% guarantees you nothing.

Notice that General Awareness alone is 40% of CBT 1 and roughly 42% of CBT 2. More than any other railway exam, NTPC rewards the candidate who reads current affairs daily. Maths and reasoning are scoring but they are also where everyone else scores; GA is where ranks are actually separated.

How to apply

1. Go to rrbapply.gov.in. This one portal handles every RRB — do not look for a separate zonal website.
2. Create your account with a mobile number and email you will keep for the next two years. Every admit card, exam-city slip and result notice goes there.
3. Fill Part 1 — personal details, category, qualification. Your name and date of birth must match your 10th certificate character for character.
4. Choose your RRB zone. This decides where you are examined and where you are posted, and it normally cannot be changed later. Think about it before you click.
5. Set your post preferences, keeping the medical standards above in mind.
6. Allow the camera and let the portal take a live photograph. There is no photo to upload this cycle — it is captured during the application. Sit facing a plain white wall with even light on your face, and make sure your face fills more than half the frame.
7. Upload your signature as a JPG or JPEG, 30 to 49 KB, at least 140 × 60 pixels, signed in black ink in your normal handwriting. Block capitals are rejected.
8. Enter your bank account and IFSC carefully — this is where your fee refund will land.
9. Pay the fee and wait for the on-screen confirmation. Do not close the tab mid-payment.
10. Download the submitted application and keep the registration number safe.

Problems candidates hit — and what to do

"My final-year result comes in December. Can I apply now and submit the degree later?"
No. The notification requires the qualification to be held on or before 6 November 2026 and explicitly bars candidates awaiting results. Applying anyway means you lose the fee and get removed at document verification. Wait for the next CEN — RRB runs NTPC cycles regularly.

"I wear glasses. Which posts can I take?"
Senior Clerk cum Typist and Junior Accounts Assistant cum Typist, both C2, and Chief Commercial cum Ticket Supervisor at B2 depending on your corrected vision. Avoid Goods Train Manager — A2 requires 6/9 distant vision in both eyes without glasses. Candidates who ignore this clear CBT 2 and then get rejected at the medical, after a year of work.

"I picked the wrong RRB zone."
The modification window from 9 to 18 November lets you correct most fields, but zone changes are normally not permitted. If the zone is wrong and cannot be changed, you have one real option: sit the exam in that zone anyway and accept a posting there. Choose the zone on day one as if it were permanent, because it practically is.

"The payment failed but money left my account."
Do not pay twice on the same day. Wait 24 hours — failed transactions usually auto-reverse and the portal updates your status. If the money is debited and the application still shows unpaid after 48 hours, you still have until 8 November, so raise it with the portal's helpdesk with your transaction reference rather than creating a second application. Two applications for the same CEN get both rejected.

"My live photo keeps getting rejected."
Almost always lighting. Face a window, not away from it, so the light falls on your face instead of behind you. Plain white or very light wall, no cap, no glasses glare, no one else in frame, and move close enough that your head and shoulders fill most of the picture.

"Is 3,548 posts worth it with lakhs of applicants?"
Look at the structure rather than the total. 2,750 of those posts are Goods Train Manager, and the A2 medical standard removes a large share of applicants before the competition even starts. If your eyesight is sound, your realistic chance at that post is better than at almost any other Level 5 railway job this year.

"I did not get the refund after CBT 1."
Check the bank details in your application first — a wrong IFSC is the usual cause. Refunds are processed in batches well after the exam, so give it a few weeks before escalating. And remember the condition: no appearance, no refund.

What to do between now and the exam

The CBT 1 date has not been announced, which in railway terms usually means a gap of several months after the form closes. That is enough time to prepare properly rather than cram.

Start General Awareness today, because it is the largest section in both stages and the only one that cannot be built in the last month. Read one newspaper daily and keep a single notebook of static GK — Indian polity, geography, Railways-specific facts like zones, headquarters and the current Railway Budget allocations.

For Mathematics and Reasoning, work on timed sets rather than topic lists. You have 90 minutes for 100 questions in CBT 1, which is 54 seconds a question including reading time. Accuracy under that clock, with one-third negative marking in play, is the whole skill.

Bookmark this page. We will update it with the exam-city intimation, the admit-card link and the answer key as each is released, and the notification PDF above is hosted on our own server so it stays available even if the official link moves.