With inadequate transport and incessant downpour the candidates appearing for the JEE (Main) examinations on Tuesday had a tough time to reach their exam centres in parts of Bengal.
This, notwithstanding the fact that the State Government had earlier directed the transport authorities to ensure that additional numbers of buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws plied on the road.
Students said they had to brave heavy rain to reach their examination centres from as far as 200 km away to Kolkata and Siliguri. Such was the situation that a parent a daily wage earner had to hire a motorcycle to ferry his son 150 km from East Midnapore to Kolkata. “I had no other choice because it was the question of my son’s career… I cannot let him dig earth like me,” said his father.
Others Aakash,, Dipanjan and Anamika had to travel all the way from Behrampore and Malda to Kolkata and Siliguri respectively shelling out huge amount of cash because “we could not find public transport.”
“Inside the halls they maintained good social distancing and other norms but outside our parents were allowed to drench in the rain… the exams could have been postponed,” said one of the students who traveled from Khardaha in North 24 Parganas.
With August 31 being a lockdown day and “we having no relative in Kolkata we had to travel 200 km from Behrampore to Kolkata hiring a private cab and shelling out Rs 8,000,” a candidate said adding the NEET examines might get a better deal as the Metro Railways might be running during their exams.
Meanwhile, with the Metro Railways planning to restart its services from September 8, the transport travails of Kolkata commuters may get mitigated to a great extent.
The Metro Railway authorities have written a letter to the Bengal Government seeking a meeting of senior officers to work out the standard operating procedures the Metro authorities said on Tuesday.
“We have written to the State Government … in fact all the three railways including the Eastern Railways, and South-Eastern Railways and the Metro Railways have written to the State Government seeking a meeting to work out an SoP following the corona protocols,” Metro Railway CPRO, Indrani Bandopadhyay said adding “if all goes well then we will be able to commence our services from September 8.”
The Metro Railways have already started making preparations like installation of sanitizing kiosks besides disinfecting the carriages and the platforms, the officer said adding “following the directives of the Union Government the smart cards will be issued instead of tokens in order to maintain social distancing.”
Besides, seats will be marked alternatively for the passengers’ occupation. “This means there will be social distancing in sitting arrangements and passengers will be required to spare one place to avoid personal contact. Apart from this the number of trains running will be limited and their timing too will be curtailed,” she said adding the trains will run from Monday to Saturday and there will be no train on Sunday.
Officials of the ER and SER however would not give any specific timing for running the suburban local trains considered the lifelines of Kolkata. “At present we are making some plans and things will beworked out after vivid discussions … at present proposals are there to run limited trains and that too ‘galloping ones’ --- such trains skip every alternate stations,” the official said adding the hawkers will be debarred from entering the station premises and the trains for the time being.”