Presidential polls: Voters to get special pens

New Delhi: Members of Parliament and legislators who will vote to elect the next President on Monday have been barred from carrying their personal pens inside the voting chamber and will have to mark their ballot with a specially-designed marker, the Election Commission (EC) said on Sunday.

After the ink controversy in the Rajya Sabha polls in Haryana last year, the EC has decided to give special pens to the electors to mark their votes in the presidential and vice-presidential polls.

Specially serial-numbered pens with violet ink have been supplied by the EC for voters to mark their votes on Monday.

“Before entering the voting chamber, a polling staff will collect personal pens from the voters and hand over the special pen to mark their votes on the ballot paper. When the member comes out of the voting chamber, the special pen will be taken back and the polling staff will return the personal pen,” a commission spokesperson said.

Announcing the schedule of the election, the EC made it clear that use of any other pen could lead to invalidation of the vote at the time of counting under Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Rules, 1974. The special pens have been procured from Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd. which supplies indelible ink to the EC.

In another first, the poll watchdog has also prepared special posters carrying dos and don’ts for the voters. It asks them to use only EC-issued pens and warns that no whip or directive can be issued to party members to vote in favour of any candidate. Since it is a secret ballot, the voters should not disclose whom they have voted for.

Green-coloured ballot papers will be there for MPs and pink for MLAs. The ballot boxes will be brought to Delhi for counting on July 20.

The voters include 233 elected members of the Rajya Sabha, 543 of the Lok Sabha. A total of 32 polling stations — one in Parliament House and one each in state legislative Assemblies — have been set up.

NDA nominee Ram Nath Kovind is pitted against Opposition candidate Meira Kumar in the presidential polls.