Overview
- After videos showed polling staff using marker pens to ink voters, the State Election Commission opened an inquiry and said bottled indelible ink will be reinstated for the February 5 phase.
- Voters and opposition figures posted demonstrations claiming the marks faded or could be removed with sanitiser or nail polish remover, including a video by singer Vishal Dadlani.
- Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and MNS chief Raj Thackeray alleged the practice could enable multiple voting and accused the administration of bias.
- The SEC cited 2011 orders allowing markers in local body polls and warned that attempts to erase the mark or spread misleading videos could attract legal action.
- Separately, the commission acknowledged technical issues in roughly 2% of EVMs in districts including Dhule, Jalgaon, Pune and Amravati, attributing problems to older machines and launching probes.