Mumbai: Several young aspirants who want to be part of the state police constabulary have been facing problems filling out the application forms and getting themselves registered on the Maharashtra Government portal. They have been staying awake till late at night to fill out the forms, thinking that the website would be “less crowded” at odd hours.
Several legislators, including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Dhananjay Munde, have written to deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and asked that the time to register and apply online be extended by at least 15 more days.
The State Government had announced the recruitment program for filling up 18,331 posts of police constables, police drivers and personnel in the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) and aspiring candidates were to register themselves and fill out online forms between November 9 and November 30.
“I have been trying to fill the form for the last three days and have been visiting a nearby cyber cafe to do the same,” said one of the aspirants on condition of anonymity.
“During the day-time, it is not possible to open the website and therefore I have been trying it late in the night, around midnight and despite that not being able to complete the procedure,” it added.
“I have been filling forms of aspiring candidates since 2006 but this year students have been coming to my shop and returning empty-handed. Therefore, I have started keeping my shop open from midnight and till morning when the load on the website is comparatively lesser,” said Sameer Mansuri, a Cyber Cafe owner.
However, he added, that several candidates have been unable to fill out and complete the forms.
“On Sunday night, I tried filling the forms of twelve people. However, I could complete only three of them,” said Mansuri.
Mansuri said it was taking two to three hours to fill one form during the day and 45 minutes at night. However, he added that after completing the forms at times they are unable to make the payment of requisite fees.
“The website is down due to several candidates logging on simultaneously. We have asked all the aspiring candidates to try and fill out the forms during the night. More than 2,000 students are yet to fill the forms,” said Vikas Yadav, director of Prahar Academy, which has 19 branches in the city and a total of 35 across the state, where aspiring candidates are trained for police and other recruitments.
“There were some issues which have been rectified now. More than 11 lakh applications are already received by us. We expect no more than 15 lakh applications for the 18,331 posts advertised. We had given them 21 days in all to apply for the posts. At times lakhs of candidates log on to the website due to which there were some issues like slowing down of the site and the issues are rectified,” said Sanjay Kumar, Director General of Police, Training, Maharashtra police.