The distressed candidates approached the city's railway board.
A train delay of over 24 hours jeopardized the future of over 400 aspirants, who were going from Delhi to Bhubaneswar to appear for the exam organised by the Railway Recruitment Board.
The exam was for the recruitment of Assistant Loco Pilot for the railways. The train was supposed to reach Bhubaneswar at 10:30 am yesterday, but it reached at 9:30 in the morning today. The exam was scheduled to start at 7:30.
The distressed candidates approached the city's railway board and demanded that they be allowed to appear for the exam.
After consideration, the board allowed the students to appear for the exam in the second shift.
This was not the first time the incident took place. On Monday, hundreds of candidates had faced the same issue and were allowed to appear in the exam the next day.
The Indian Railways is fraught with the problem of punctuality. The punctuality performance of the railways in 2017-18 was worse in comparison to the two financial years before that, with almost 30 per cent of trains running late, according to official data quoted by PTI.
"If we complete track maintenance work of about 5,000 km by 2018-2019, then in the next six to eight months passengers will be spared the inconvenience of delays," Mohd Jamshed, the Railway Board Member (Traffic), told reporters last year.
The punctuality of mail and express trains during April 2017-March 2018 was 71.39 per cent as compared to 76.69 per cent in the corresponding period of 2016-2017, which is a deterioration of 5.30 per cent. In 2015-2016, 77.44 per cent trains ran on time.
Trains are getting delayed due to foggy conditions in the northern parts of the country. Today, due to the fog, at least 25 Delhi-bound trains were delayed by two to six hours.
With inputs from PTI