Ahead of polling, the Election Commission has ordered 26 lakh bottles of indelible ink at a cost of ₹33 crore. Each bottle contains 10 millilitres of ink. In the 2014 election, the panel bought 21.5 lakh phials, 4.5 lakh fewer than this year’s purchase. Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd., a Karnataka government undertaking, is the only authorised manufacturer of the ink. Nearly 90 crore people are eligible to vote in this election, and the bottles will be distributed to nearly 10 lakh polling stations across the country.
Managing Director, Mysore Paints, Chandrashekhar Doddamani told PTI that the company has received an order for 26 lakh phials of 10cc each from the EC. “The expected turnover is approximately ₹33 crore,” he said.
The order, Mr. Doddamani said, is higher than the last general elections by 4.5 lakh phials.
In 1962, the Election Commission, in collaboration with the Law Ministry, National Physical Laboratory and National Research Development Corporation, had made an agreement with Mysore Paints for supply of indelible ink for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Since then, it has been supplying the ink for elections in India.
Mysore Paints exports indelible ink to more than 30 countries across the globe.
Soon after the note ban, the company was asked to provide indelible ink to banks to mark customers exchanging defunct currency notes to check suspicious deposits. Grappling with unending queues and frayed tempers in banks and to check operation of syndicates after the note ban, the government had introduced the system of marking customers exchanging defunct currency notes with indelible ink.
