Ludhiana: A flying rock forced its entry through a citizen service centre’s front window when the crashed server of Punjab’s e-Sewa govt portal kept stalling thousands of urgent university applications for a week.The server crash has crippled the processing of essential documents, including birth, caste, and income certificates, as well as land records and licences. Daily transactions across the district’s Sewa Kendras plummeted from a standard 5,000 to just 400 on Wednesday.The digital bottleneck coincided with peak college and university admission deadlines, turning routine administrative tasks into high-stakes emergencies for frantic students and parents.Frustration boiled over on Wednesday morning at the Haibowal centre, where an agitated applicant hurled a stone through the facility’s glass facade before fleeing the scene. The incident followed a dismal Tuesday where more than 400 applicants at the same branch were turned away empty-handed.At the district administrative complex, standard one-minute digital applications dragged on for over 15 minutes due to recurring system freezes. Frontline staff, caught between frozen loading screens and an increasingly hostile public, pleaded for calm.“The system keeps hanging midway,” a member of the staff said. “People think we are delaying their work, but the problem is beyond our control.”The crisis has compounded public resentment following a week-long staff strike over stagnant wages that had already backlogged local services just days prior.Sewa Kendras district manager Mandeep Kumar acknowledged the widespread disruption but claimed that system updates were in progress to resolve the bottleneck. He said: “The processing speed today was slightly better than previous days. Expect the portal to return to smooth operation by Thursday.”
The wait and queues are getting longer at e-Sewa Kendras in Ludhiana
The stalled e-Sewa portal in Punjab
A rock hurled at this window signals that public patience is giving way at Punjab’s e-Sewa Kendras where the system is stalled for the past one week
The wait and queues are getting longer at e-Sewa Kendras in Ludhiana
The wait and queues are getting longer at e-Sewa Kendras in Ludhiana
