The advent of the internet and its augmentation has benefited the mankind in many ways, one such instance is the use of the technology for conducting online exams and thus saving the nature's lush green trees.

The railways in India is set to make the recruitment process online for the ongoing selection process of recruiting for around 88,000 posts and thus it is estimated to have saved an astonishing 7.5 crore paper sheets which are estimated to be equivalent to 10 lakh trees.

The Indian Railways has replaced the age-old multi-lingual question booklets with online tests for the recruitment process for various posts including the assistant loco pilot, trackman, gateman, and points man.

The examination is scheduled to be conducted via online at around 300 centers and the Railways department is currently working out on the details.

"One applicant generally requires around three-four paper sheets of A4 size to write the examination. So with the whole exercise going online, the Railways has saved a significant quantity of paper sheets," one of the railway's officials said.

Describing the exercise as a "largest online recruitment drive in the world", the official said, "it is not only providing thousands of jobs, the whole process has also resulted in saving about 7.5 lakh paper sheets and 10 lakh trees approximately".

A fee of Rs 500 and Rs 250 has been charged to keep out the non-serious applicants at bay, who apply for the position but fail to appear for the test.

The examination fee of Rs 500, is fixed for the general candidates, of which Rs 400 will be refunded back to the candidates after he or she appears for the examination.

The fees is fixed at Rs 250 for SC/ST women, for those who are physically challenged, applicants who belong to the economically weaker sections, ex-servicemen and the full amount of fees will be returned back to the candidate after appearing in the examination.

We are expecting a maximum number of applicants to appear and only about 5-10 percent absent at various centers this time," the official said.

Railway, which currently employs 1.3 million people, has made elaborate arrangements to ensure that the website does not crash during the examination. The site was earlier able to handle the traffic of the online application process.

Earlier, recruitment examinations used to be conducted continuously manually, but the Railways had to abandon the system and opt for online mode after a few alleged incidents of question paper leaks.