Patients with appointments at hospitals in South India and students scheduled to appear for counselling at IIT Kharagpur are suffering the most because of rail-link disruption caused by flooding.

In some places, tracks ha-ve been uprooted by the surging floodwaters. Elsewhere, the girders of a bridge spanning a river have been damaged. On June 17, none of the south-bound trains ran, while cancellations and diversions have become the routine..

Anjali Jana, 38, of Midnapore, who has a damaged kidney, was to see doctors in the nephrology department of Christian Medical College, Vellore, on Friday. “Our train is delayed by 24 hours and we missed the appointment,” said husband Ranjit.

Hospital officials said over 100 patients had been unable to reach Vellore from Calcutta and other parts of Bengal. “Most of these patients are reaching at later dates but we are accommodating them,” said Atanu Jana, the associate director of the hospital.

Bilkis Khatun, 13, of Burdwan, has to take a train on Saturday for Bangalore for a surgery to replace both the defective valves of her heart at Narayan Hrudalaya. “We don’t know if we will be able to reach there at all,” said her mother.

Many passengers to Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad have been forced to change their travel plan and go by air, paying almost five times more after the recent increase in fares. An AC 3-tier seat on a Howrah-Bangalore train costs Rs 1,416, while the average airfare on the route is around Rs 6,500. For Chennai, the AC 3-tier fare is Rs 1,264 against the average airfare of over Rs 6,000.

“There has been an increase in demand for tickets on flights to Bangalore and Chennai in the past three days,” said an Air India spokesperson.

“We are giving priority to South-bound trains because of the patients,” said Archana Srivastava, the chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway.

For Prithu Roy, who has to get to Kharagpur for his IIT counselling on Friday, the only option was to start early. He left the city a day earlier. “We were very tense. A lot of trains were getting cancelled and if the weather worsened, we might not have reached, so we left the night before.”

Rajdeep Talapatra, a student of South Point High School, went to the station to catch a train to Kharagpur for counselling on June 18. “Two local trains got cancelled. We got a ticket for the Gitanjali Express but even that got cancelled. We had to go back home and then take a car to Kharagpur the next morning,” he said.

IIT Kharagpur is holding its counselling between June 17 and 21 and each student is given a specific date but the authorities have decided to make time whenever they reach. “We will not be able to extend the dates for counselling or defer them but the students can come in on any day between June 17 to 21 even if it is not their scheduled date for counselling,” said Amarnath Samanta, a professor.

The institute is also trying to provide accommodation on the campus to all those reaching Kharagpur before the scheduled date as hotels are few.

“We usually provide accommodation to those coming from distant places but this year, we have got calls even from Calcutta, asking for a place to stay because of the floods,” said an IIT employee.

The railway spokesperson said work to repair the damaged tracks was being rushed but it would still take another 10-15 days to restore one line between Kharagpur and Bhadrak. “The second line may be repaired in six months as a new bridge needs to be constructed,” Srivastava added.