Karnal, April 16 -- 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.

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 th...