Reuters
10/11/2004
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NEW DELHI - A state-run Indian firm that supplied indelible ink markers for Afghanistan's presidential poll blamed Afghan officials on Monday for using the wrong pens to mark voters' fingers, leading to charges of irregularities.

Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited in southern India supplied 50,000 indelible ink markers for the poll in Afghanistan, but some polling stations failed to use the ink intended to prevent voters from voting more than once, officials said.

Instead, some election officials used ordinary marker ink meant for ballot papers which was quickly washed off.

"The problems reported in some polling stations was because election officials used ballot marker pens instead of indelible ink markers on voters' fingers," Harakumar, marketing manager of the Indian firm, told Reuters by telephone from Mysore in Karnataka.

The local government owns the Mysore company.

Several candidates taking on President Hamid Karzai in the Afghan vote have called for a boycott of the election, alleging the system to prevent voting fraud had collapsed.

"The problem was from the side of the Afghanistan election authorities. Our indelible ink markers, which are clearly labelled, worked fine," Harakumar said.

Millions of Afghans participated enthusiastically in their war-ravaged country's first direct presidential poll, ignoring threats from militant Taliban guerrillas.

Mysore Ink and Varnish Ltd, whose turnover in the year ended March 2004 was around 100 million rupees, has supplied indelible ink for elections in a number of countries, including South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria and Cambodia.

Harakumar said the company had not received complaints about its indelible ink markers from any of those countries.

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