Glitch in e-Kharid portal disrupts crop procurement across Haryana mandis

Farmers alleges they had to wait for 3 to 4 hours to enter the grain markets; officials resorted to manual passes to ease situation

Wheat procurement operations were severely disrupted on Wednesday following a multi-hour outage of the e-Kharid portal, leading to chaotic scenes in Haryana’s grain markets.

At Karnal’s new grain market on NH-44, farmer Veer Singh said he drove 32 km from Dachar village with his nephew to the mandi, where he waited three hours to get his gate pass issued. (HT Photo)

Farmers from mandis in Karnal, Yamunanagar and Panipat districts alleged that they had to wait for at least three to four hours before they could enter the grain market to sell their crop. However, authorities resorted to issuing manual passes to ease the situation.

At Karnal’s new grain market on NH-44, farmer Veer Singh said he drove 32 km from Dachar village with his nephew to the mandi, where he waited three hours to get his gate pass issued. “First we queued to get our produce weighed at a weighbridge, then at the entry gate and later for the biometric. It took me four hours just to enter the mandi and the biometric took another hour because my thumbs couldn’t match,” the farmer said.

Another farmer from Jalmana village, Sukhbir Singh said that after waiting for three hours, he was issued a manual pass but had to wait again for biometric due to the rush. Rakesh Kumar from Rasoolpur Kalan village echoed similar sentiments, saying the portal snag is giving nightmares to farmers who must sit in their tractors for hours without food or rest.

Spokesperson of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Sir Chotu Ram) Bahadur Baldi alleged that heaps of wheat have piled up in the grain markets and farmers are facing severe hardships as a result of the failure to lift the produce.

“Due to the lack of lifting, farmers are not receiving payments for their crops because the government does not release payments until the wheat has been successfully transported to the warehouses. Gate passes are not being issued to farmers as the server is down,” he added.

Additional deputy commissioner (ADC) Rahul Raiya said that the portal was non-functional only during the early hours of the day until 12 noon and manual entries were allowed for the farmers’ convenience. Meanwhile, Karnal deputy commissioner Anand Kumar Sharma inspected the Nissing grain market and directed the officials to expedite wheat lifting.