In Mumbai, on Thursday, stars posed with their middle finger inked as proof of voting. Election Commission officials said the publicity that stars like Abhishek Bachchan attracted can confuse voters, who may, in the next two phases, ask for their middle finger to be marked instead.
In Mumbai, on Thursday, stars posed with their middle finger inked as proof of voting.
HT Image
officials said the publicity that stars like Abhishek Bachchan (left) attracted can confuse voters, who may, in the next two phases, ask for their middle finger to be marked instead.
The fine print
Election officers inspect forefingers to ensure there’s no ink. They then apply indelible ink from the tip of the nail to the bottom of the first joint of the forefinger.
But in Maharashtra, on April 30 officers marked the middle finger. The reason: The forefinger of some voters could have had a mark from local body bypolls in some parts of the state, held in February 2009, an EC official said.
In the normal course, the mark is put on the middle finger for proxy voters, who vote on behalf of defence personnel. In that case, the forefinger is marked for one’s own vote and the middle finger for the proxy vote. This year in Maharashtra, the ring finger was marked for proxy voters.
The rule didn’t apply in the first three phases of polls in Jammu and Kashmir, where assembly polls were held in December 2008. The exception wasn’t made in other states like Uttar Pradesh either, where byelections were held in February
India ink
The indelible ink is made especially for elections in India and many other countries by Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited, a public sector undertaking.
For 2009, 20 million bottles of the ink had been provided to the election commission with each bottle costing
Rs 64. The ink, applied to ensure each voter exercises the franchise only once, takes at least a month to fade.
The ink was also used in general elections in South Africa in April 2009 and has been exported to Nepal, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Columbia.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India.
A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital.
Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures.
As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories.
His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali.
He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues.
He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities.
Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power.
He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More
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