Bhubaneswar, May 9:  Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has asked officers to fill up 7,500 vacancies in the different department of the state government by next month, an official said today.

The chief minister, while reviewing the ongoing recruitment exercise on Monday, said he would be regularly monitoring the process followed by the officers to fill up the vacancies, he said.

Patnaik also sought a special drive to employ officials in the vacant posts reserved for Schedule Tribe (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC) communities in the next six months.

During the review meeting, it was revealed that around 62,500 positions in various government departments had been filled up in the past four years, and the recruitment examinations had been conducted by the Odisha Public Service Commission regularly since 2015, he added.