Special Pen for voters

The 14^th presidential election is very much talked among many commoners not that Ram NathKovind, a Dalit since 1997 is elected as the country’s top post but for other reasons. This is the first time that a law makers are barred from carrying their own pen during the election. A new pen with violet ink was introduced and was send to all states and territories for casting their respective votes. This is perhaps a strategy by the Election Commissioner to tackle inappropriate casting.

This mechanism perhaps can be used in other elections as so to check tampering of casting as even EVM machines cannot be trusted these days as claimed by many defeated politicians.

The special pens have been procured from Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd, which also supplies indelible ink used by EC to mark index fingers of the voters

 

For starter this pen was first introduced following a controversy during voting in the Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana in September 2016 in which votes of 12 MLAs from Congressand its allies were declared invalid because they had marked their preferences with a pen other than the one officially supplied by the poll staff.