Hubballi: More than 1,000 aspirants from Belagavi and Dharwad districts missed the examination for police posts in the District Armed Reserve (DAR) scheduled for Sunday in Bengaluru allegedly due to the delay in the departure of Rani Chennamma Express on Saturday night.
Technical snags are said to be the cause for the delay in the arrival of the train. The candidates who could not attend the examination, held a protest at the railway station here on Sunday. They withdrew the protest after Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy announced the postponement of the police exam to help out the affected students.
The candidates claimed that they headed to Bengaluru to take the examinations at 10:30 am on Sunday. But the train which was supposed to reach Hubballi Railway Station at 10:30 pm on Saturday, arrived late at 6 am on Sunday.
South Western Railway (SWR) divisional regional manager Rajesh Mohan and central public relations officer E. Vijaya told mediapersons that one of the two engines of a goods train carrying coal from Goa to Hubballi, broke down near Mugad on the outskirts of Dharwad on Saturday at around 10 pm. The railway officials tried to clear the track using the passenger locomotive of Rani Chennamma. But the passenger locomotive could not push the goods train from behind for more than two km. Meanwhile, South Western Railway officials dispatched an additional goods locomotive and cleared the track.
