Vinod Tawde comes to rescue of students in fix

Education minister Vinod Tawde came to the rescue of thousands of students of the University of Mumbai on Monday morning after they were left stranded at various stations of Western Railway (WR) due to the breaking of an overhead wire that led to the cancellation of nearly 60 services.

Mr Tawde instructed the university to give additional time to students who were appearing for university exams and reached their exam centres late due to the disruption of train services. On its part, the university directed exam centres to allow students to appear for the exams regardless of where they were allotted exam centres for the Monday exams.

According to an official from Mr Tawde’s office, they had received many frantic calls from students appearing for various university exams about the situation at railway stations on the suburban western line. “As many services on the slow line had been cancelled trains were running packed... Mr Tawde called up the MU officials and instructed them to accommodate students who reached late for the exams and ensure that they do not suffer in their exams due to the disruption of services,” said the official.

Confirming that many students appearing for exams in the morning session had been inconvenienced due to the disruption in train services an official of the varsity said, “The university had scheduled exams for 231 papers on Monday, out of which exams for 98 papers which included M.A. (Part I & II), TYBCOM (Yearly), B.com (Sem VI) (CBSGS), M.sc. (Sem I) (CBSGS) papers were scheduled for Monday morning.

The manuscript department received many calls from students informing about the situation after which the Controller of Examination asked all exam centres to allow students to appear for the exams regardless of the centres allotted to them.” Though the WR ran around 18 extra services from Borivali the commuters remained affected as the slow line was out of services from 6.45 am to 9.20 am. Services towards Virar were also affected as services were being running from select platforms at Borivali station.