Travelling in the Sabarmati Express were 400-odd youths aspiring for jobs that are vital to preventing the kind of accident that happened today. Mostly from Bihar and eastern UP, they were coming to Gujarat to sit for the railway recruitment board’s examination for Grade-D. ‘‘Today, we learnt first-hand what a railway job is all about,’’ said one of them at Ahmedabad station. ‘‘Many of us are injured, but we are determined to go ahead and take up a railway job.’’ The board exam is on Sunday and will be held at centres in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Anand, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. Railway officials said several lakh candidates are appearing for it, some 40,000 in Ahmedabad alone. Some of these candidates also helped in rescue operations. ‘‘We got down and saw a hill-like structure,’’ says Naresh Kumar, who had boarded the train at Kanpur. ‘‘There were five bogies on top of each other, with many trapped inside.’’ The candidates claim the rescue teams were a little late in reaching the spot. Lying in the out-patient ward of S.S.G. Hospital, the 24-year-old says, ‘‘My parents were expecting me to clear the exams. But now.”
