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50,000 Graduates, 3,700 PhD Scholars, Apply For 62 Peon-Messenger Posts In Uttar Pradesh

More than 50,000 graduates, including B.Tech and MBA degree holders, have applied for the job.
Abel Halasz / EyeEm via Getty Images

In Uttar Pradesh, presently governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, 3,700 PhD scholars have applied for 62 peon-messenger posts.

The Times of India reported more than 50,000 graduates, including 28,000 post graduates and 3,700 PhD scholars, have applied for the vacancy at the telecom wing of the UP, which only requires a candidate to have passed the fifth grade.

The graduates include B.Tech and MBA degree holders.

Only 7,400 applicants out of the 93,500 total applicants have studied between class V and class XII, according to the TOI report.

A source in the police department reportedly said, "The job is like that of a postman's and the person has deliver police telecom department's messages from one office to the other."

The large number of overqualified applicants have been attribute to the lack of jobs in the markets. The peon-messenger post is a government job that pays Rs.20,000, every month.

While campaigning for the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Narendra Modi, then BJP's prime ministerial candidate, promised 2 crore jobs if his party came to power at the Centre. Almost five years on, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Opposition has made unemployment a mainstay of its attack against the BJP.

Earlier this year, Hindustan Timesreported that almost 15,000 candidates, including graduates, postgraduates and those pursuing doctoral degrees, applied for eight peon posts at Jind district court in Haryana, where the BJP government is in power.

In 2016, when the Samajwadi Party was in power in UP, 18 lakh applicants including graduates applied for 40,000 sanitation jobs, which paid Rs. 15,000. The job required candidates to have passed Class 8, with knowledge of how to ride a bicycle and use a broom. The year before that, in September 2015, 23 lakh candidates applied for 368 vacancies for peons in Agra.

Earlier this year, almost three lakh people in Madhya Pradesh, where BJP has been in power for over a decade, applied for 738 peon posts. The applicants included engineers, law graduates and MBAs.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.