Rain, landslide, blocked road: 300 students miss exams on Nashik-Trimbakeshwar route

They left early enough. By 8 am, more than 300 students were on the Nashik-Trimbakeshwar road, headed to examinations scheduled for 10 am. They never made it. Heavy rain and a land subsidence incident at a construction site severed the road, bringing traffic to a complete halt and leaving hundreds stranded for hours with no way through.

Students from Sandip Foundation College, Brahma Valley College, Sapkal College, and several other institutions were among those caught in the gridlock. Despite waiting it out, many were unable to reach their examination centres in time.

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Who was affected

The disruption hit first- and second-year engineering students and second- and third-year pharmacy students from nearly four major colleges. Across institutions, the situation was the same: hours of waiting, no movement, and examinations missed through no fault of their own.

What students are asking for

With the circumstances clearly outside their control, students have now demanded that authorities cancel the two examination papers that were scheduled for Wednesday. Authorities are yet to respond to the demand for cancellation or rescheduling of the affected papers.

Heavy rainfall batters Mumbai

After a short break, heavy rain and thunderstorms returned to Mumbai on Wednesday morning. This caused problems for people commuting to work and disrupted local train services.

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Long-distance trains going to Gujarat were also impacted due to waterlogging in certain areas. Services on the Mumbai-Pune route are still recovering from landslides that occurred on Monday.

The rain caused water levels in the city's reservoirs to rise, with Tulsi lake overflowing on Tuesday night, shortly after Vihar lake also overflowed. The India Meteorological Department predicted light to moderate rain for Mumbai and its suburbs throughout the day.

Local trains on both the Central and Western Railway networks were delayed by 25 to 30 minutes, but Metro and public bus services were running normally.

(with inputs from Pravin Thakare)