As many as 3,000 aspirants could not appear in the District Armed Reserve (DAR) police recruitment exam on August 5, 2018, due to delay in the train’s arrival. A failed engine of a goods train ruined the dream of hundreds of youths from Belagavi and Dharwad districts as they were unable to write the Sunday’s examination in Bengaluru. According to media reports, the aspirants were travelling in the Rani Chennamma Express and could not reach the destination on time. It was slated to arrive the station at 6:25 am and the examination’s time was 10:30 am. However, due to such severe technical snag, the train reached the city at 3:00 pm. The students demanded to conduct a re-examination.

On Saturday midnight, the train stopped at Kambarganvi station in Karnataka. It was only after an hour of halt that the passengers realised that their train had no engine. After fixing the glitch, the Rani Chennamma Express left the station at 3:20 am and reached Hubballi by 6:00 am. Realising, that the passenger train cannot reach Bengaluru before 2:00 pm, the worried candidates demanded that SWR take the responsibility and request the government to conduct a re-exam. The protest was withdrawn after Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy agreed to give one more opportunity to sit for the recruitment exam.

On the other hand, the railway official reported that even after the train started to move, there were multiple incidents of pulling the alarm chains leading to delay further. According to Divisional railway manager of Hubballi, SWR, Rajesh Mohan said that the protests had interrupted the train. Otherwise, they would have reached Bengaluru by 8:30 am. He was quoted in a TOI report saying, “When the engine returned to Rani Chennamma Express by 1.08am, the candidates started an agitation, fearing they would miss the exam.” However, Deputy General Manager of SWR said that they would not file any complaint against the agitators as their action was out of fear of missing the exam.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 06, 2018 10:18 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).