Same thing happened to me a few years back on the DEL - LUD sector. That sector runs only a couple of times a week and so once they cancelled that day's flight, the next scheduled flight was a few days away..!!!
After a couple of hours of solid haggling, they arranged 2 Innovas for about 8 remaining passengers and we proceeded by road there on..Back then itself the ground staff were saying that this flight gets cancelled pretty often.