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Updated on: 29 April,2014 07:03 AM IST  |  Team mid-day | Serial Number Thermal Inkjet Printer

The 'non-removable' voters' ink stain can be removed in five minutes with the help of a common household matchstick. WATCH the video in which mid-day proves this point

If you think the ink mark painted on your finger after you cast your vote was impossible to remove, you are wrong. As an experiment, this newspaper’s photographer managed to erase it within minutes. The same was also confirmed by a Bollywood superstar, who also managed to do away with his ink stain, as he had to go for a shoot.

The ink for the electoral process is manufactured by Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd (MPVL), a Government of Karnataka undertaking. It is applied on the voter’s index finger on the nail, extending below the nail joint. The Election Commission’s claim that the ink was indelible had fallen flat.

It should be noted that Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar had asked, in his speech to mathadi workers in Navi Mumbai, to remove the ink stain and vote twice for his party once in Mumbai and once in their hometowns in Satara as both places went to polls on separate days (April 24 and April 17 respectively).

Pawar later clarified that he had made the remark ‘in jest’. Offering a possible explanation, Dr Sadanand Dharap, chairman, Board of Studies of Chemistry of the Mumbai University said, “Silver nitrate is very expensive. Usually there is a 25% of solution of silver nitrate in ink.

If the silver nitrate proportion is less and if it is not up to the mark, then only ink might have come onto the finger. This ink is dye and can easily be removed. Maybe there is a manufacturing fault.”

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