• Election Commission seeks availability, reliability and usage of pens
• MPVL to earn Rs. 8.9 crore by supplying vials for Assembly elections in five States

Mysore/Mysuru: The indelible ink vials manufactured by the Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited (MPVL) for marking the fingers of those casting their votes will soon be relegated into history as the company will in future manufacture trendy marker pens for the same purpose.

The MPVL, also called MyLAC, is the sole supplier of ink for elections. The Election Commission has already asked the MPVL about the availability, reliability and also the usage of the pens and the Commission has confirmed that it wants to use indelible pens henceforth, MPVL Chairman N.V. Phaneesh told Star of Mysore.

The MPVL has already done its research way back in 2017 and has produced pens that were submitted to the Election Commission for approval. Phaneesh said that the Commission was impressed by the trendy pens and the company is giving final touches to incorporate improvements and suggestions asked by the Election Commission.

The MPVL has developed marker pens with technical support from National Physical Laboratory, National Research Development Corporation and the National Chemical Laboratory on the technology, the colour combination and the texture of the ink. Each pen could be used to mark 1,000 voters.

When compared to the indelible ink vials, the marker pens are convenient, user-friendly and economical. Sometimes, while transporting, the indelible ink vials leak and there were complaints of wastage and spill-over. With the marker pens there are no such fears and it is convenient to carry and to apply on fingers. Moreover, it also saves the time of polling booth officials.

It may be mentioned here that these specially designed marker pens were used in the 2017 Presidential elections where 1,000 pens were supplied to mark the ballot papers. Only such votes that had the markings from the pen were considered valid. In the past, 389 such pens were supplied to Legislative Council Elections of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal and 794 marker pens were supplied to Co-operative Societies elections.

Phaneesh said that for the forthcoming Assembly elections in five States — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab — the respective State Election Commissions have placed orders for indelible ink and 5,04,000 vials have been produced at MPVL, and except for Uttar Pradesh that has sought 4 lakh vials, the requirements of all the other States have been fulfilled, he said.

While 62,000 vials have been sent to Punjab, 5,000 vials to Goa, Manipur has got 7,400 vials and 30,000 vials have been sent to Uttarakhand. The vials will be sent to Uttar Pradesh in another three days, Phaneesh added. This fresh order enabled  MPVL to gain an additional income of Rs. 8.9 crore.

“Since 1962, we have always supplied indelible ink on time. We work overtime to fulfil the order commitment and we have not failed in even a single schedule so far and we do not intend to fail,” he said.