Narendra Modi has directed at least one million people be given jobs in the central government in the next 18 months, according to sources.

Afghan Voice Agency(AVA)_Monitoring, The announcement comes at a time the opposition has been raising the issue of unemployment rates in the country, putting pressure on the current leadership to addressing the issue.

“PM @narendramodi reviewed the status of Human Resources in all departments and ministries and instructed that recruitment of 10 lakh people be done by the Government in mission mode in next 1.5 years,” the Prime Minister’s Office tweeted earlier this week.

The government earlier this year told Parliament that there are a whopping 872,000 vacant posts in central government departments as on March 1, 2020. The central government has over 400,000 sanctioned, but less than 320,000 employees are in place, according to local media.

Hence, the government has been trying to fill up these vacancies over the years, where the latest announcement could be a breakthrough on the job front but may carry a significant financial implication for the government.

The maximum vacancies are in the big ministries and departments like Posts, Defence (Civil), Railways and Revenue. As per details with News18, against nearly 1.5 million sanctioned posts in the Railways, about 230,000 posts are vacant in the Railways Ministry.

In the Defence (Civil) department, there are nearly 250,000 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of nearly 600,000 employees. There are about 90,000 vacancies in the Posts department against a total sanctioned strength of 260,000 employees while in the Revenue department, there are nearly 74,000 vacancies against a total sanctioned strength of 170,000 employees.

In the Ministry of Home Affairs, against 1 million sanctioned posts, nearly 130,000 posts are vacant.

A senior government official explained to News18 that work of some departments has been suffering due to an acute shortage of employees and fresh recruitment has been tardy though retirements have happened and even the sanctioned strength of employees in ministries has grown over the years.

The move could also dent criticism from the Opposition on the unemployment front ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.