Leaders of the opposition want individuals to be held accountable as recordings revealing how easy it is to remove voting marks go viral.
The permanent ink that was used to mark electors after they voted in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections on January 15, 2026, was not very good. The argument, which spread quickly through passionate political charges and viral social media recordings, has made some wonder if elections in India’s richest metropolis are fair. The Maharashtra State Election Commission has moved quickly.
People said that the “indelible ink” used in the BMC elections and those of 28 other municipal groups in Maharashtra could be readily wiped off with common household chemicals like acetone, nail polish remover, and even hand sanitizers. Politicians from both sides of the aisle yelled about the ink that could be readily removed, saying that it may lead to dishonest voting, such someone voting more than once.
The Case for Indelible Ink Grows
Varsha Gaikwad, a member of the Mumbai Congress and the Lok Sabha, posted a video on election day explaining how a party member may use acetone to get the voting ink off his finger. This is when the fight began. A lot of people became upset right away after watching the video, and a lot of other people on social media shared videos proving how easy it was to get rid of the ink. These films were made by voters, lawmakers, and reporters.
Uddhav Thackeray, the leader of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), was one of the most vociferous detractors. He wanted to know if the State Election Commission had really “hired a sanitizer agency” instead of holding genuine elections. Thackeray informed reporters after voting that this showed that the Mahayuti alliance in power and the State Election Commission were working together. The last Chief Minister said that a lot of people were worried about the new kind of pen that was being utilized. It seemed like voters could take the ink off, leave the polling place, and come back to vote again.
Raj Thackeray, who leads the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, also spoke out after voting in Dadar. He said the problem was weird and needed to be rectified right now. Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the Congress party, made things more political by declaring that the Election Commission was lying to people and that rigging votes was a crime against the country. Gandhi said that the argument showed how little faith people had in democracy.
The State Election Commission’s Answer and Explanation
Maharashtra State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare took action right away after getting more and more criticism from the public and political opponents. The SEC said on Thursday night that it will look into both the quality of the permanent ink used in marker pens and the truth of the movies that are going around on social media.
Waghmare also added that the committee would look into whether the ink was really put on during the vote or if it was taken off in a sneaky way to make up stories. The test would involve randomly checking the marker pens used by all 29 of the state’s municipal corporations to make sure the ink the company supplies them is good.
The SEC noted that Kores (India) Limited had given out the marker pens in a way that the Indian Election Commission had said was okay. They also pointed out that this technology has been used for local body elections since 2011 and hasn’t produced any big problems. Every polling place in the state gets three markers. The commission said that the Election Commission of India has finished the ink recipe and that it passed all quality tests.
The SEC made it clear that people couldn’t vote again, even if they could get the ink off their fingers, because they had full records of everyone who voted. The commission also said that anyone who tried to wipe ink off their hands and vote more than once would be breaching the law. You would be in trouble for doing these things.
The Chief Minister, Fadnavis, defends how elections are managed.
Devendra Fadnavis, the Chief Minister, completely disagreed with the assertions. He added that the SEC’s past and the way elections are run are both beneficial. Fadnavis said that marker pens have been used in Maharashtra’s local elections since 2011 and haven’t caused too many problems. He stated that this proved that the outrage right now was more about politics than about real worries about how fair the elections were.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation also put out an official statement saying that the media’s accusations that voters’ fingers were being washed off during the ongoing civic polls were not factual. The BMC made it clear that Municipal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani had not spoken anything about getting rid of permanent ink. There were no claims that were true.
The problem brings up a basic technical point: Mysore Paints and Varnish Limited (a Karnataka government company utilized in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections) makes indelible ink that is designed to last a long time without being removed. On the other hand, the marker-based ink system seems to have different chemical properties that make it more sensitive to acetone-based solvents.
State Election Commissioner Waghmare agreed with this concern and made a big change to the rules: for the next Zilla Parishad elections, the SEC would stop using marker pens and go back to using Mysore Paints & Varnish Limited’s old permanent ink. This option is a silent admission that the marker method wouldn’t perform as well as using regular indelible ink, even after years of use.
Other Issues with Elections Besides the Quality of the Ink
There were a lot of problems during the BMC elections, and the fight over permanent ink was just one of them. A lot of people in Mumbai said they found out that their names weren’t on the voter rolls even though they had voted in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. People who lived in the suburbs of Kandivali, Vakola, Colaba, Andheri, Borivali, and Prabhadevi were outraged and confused when officials told them their names weren’t on the voter lists, even though many had checked their information online just a few days before.
Famous politicians also had problems. Ganesh Naik, the Forest Minister of Maharashtra, had to go to three separate polling places in Navi Mumbai until he found his name at St. Mary’s School in Kopar Khairane. Naik was very agitated when he told reporters that it would be much worse for the average voter if a minister of his level could have his name missing from voter records.
The leaders of the opposition also stated that the BMC elections weren’t fair and open since they didn’t use Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) technology. Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray also sought to know why VVPAT technology, which lets voters check their electronic votes in person, wasn’t used in these important city elections.
Waghmare, the State Election Commissioner, said that the electoral rolls had been sorted by ward after the process of setting the borders was done. This was to address concerns regarding the voter list. He made it clear that both voters and candidates still needed to look at polling information well ahead of time. Waghmare further said that the polling booths for the assembly and Lok Sabha were not usually the same as the polling stations for each ward. This made things hard for voters.
What alliances are and how they work in politics
The BMC elections were much more important for politics than other local elections. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is the wealthiest local government in India. It has a budget of about Rs 74,400 crore for the years 2025 to 2026. It has a lot of power over the infrastructure, city growth, and services for the more than 12 million people that live in Mumbai.
The last BMC elections had been four years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic, Supreme Court judgments about OBC reservation, and long-running fights over ward delimitation had kept them from happening for more than nine years. In March 2022, Kishori Pednekar, the most recent mayor, left office. For more than four years, Mumbai didn’t have a mayor who was elected. A city manager took care of operations throughout the time.
Politics had altered a lot since the last BMC elections. Eknath Shinde and most of the Shiv Sena’s MLAs left to join the BJP in 2022. This changed the way coalitions worked. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde group), and the Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar faction) were all part of the Mahayuti alliance.
Before the elections, Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray got back together. The Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena worked together to win the BMC elections. The Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance includes the Indian National Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar group), and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray). The Congress Party also worked with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi.
There were 227 wards in the BMC elections, and more over 1,700 people ran for office. 879 women and 821 men wanted to be elected. The BJP wanted to win 136 seats, whereas the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) wanted to win 89 wards. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena ran in 52 wards, the Shiv Sena (UBT) ran in 164 wards, and the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) ran in 12 wards. You had to get at least 114 of the 227 wards that were open to win.
How Many People Vote and How Many People Take Part in Elections
The individuals in charge of the election did a lot of advertising online and in person to get people to vote, but only 52.94 percent of people participated. It wasn’t as many as the 55.53 percent who voted in the 2017 elections. Political observers were even more worried about how involved and happy voters were with the democratic process after seeing this drop in turnout, even though the stakes were high and the campaigning was fierce.
Between 52 and 61 percent of people who lived in Maharashtra’s 29 municipal corporations that held elections at the same time voted. In some of the biggest cities, fewer people voted than in previous years. According to Dinesh Waghmare, the State Election Commissioner, between 46 and 50 percent of individuals voted in the 29 civic bodies. This is smaller than the average of 56.35 percent for 26 companies in previous cycles.
On January 15, elections were held in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Mira-Bhayandar, Vasai-Virar, Panvel, Nashik, Malegaon, Ahilyanagar, Jalgaon, Dhule, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Kolhapur, Ichalkaranji, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nanded-Waghala, Parbhani, Jalna, Latur, Amravati, Akola, Nagpur, and Chandrapur.
The Law and Voting Safety
The Maharashtra State electoral Commission maintained that there were strong systems in place to stop electoral fraud, no matter what problems there were with the ink. Once a voter casts their ballot, the system keeps track of it so that they can’t vote again at any polling place. This method of keeping track of votes on a computer should stop anyone from voting more than once, even if the ink marking is erroneous.
The SEC made it clear that it is against the law to try to erase ink from ballots and trick voters. You might go to jail for this. The law specifies that anyone who tries to vote more than once after getting rid of the ink mark would be punished. It could be against the law to run for office if this happens. The commission said that just blotting off the ink doesn’t let a voter who has done something wrong vote again because there are tight regulations for keeping track of votes.
On the other hand, leaders of the opposition stated that the disagreement hurt people’s faith in democracy. Rahul Gandhi argued that the Commission was lying to the people. This was only one part of a wider problem: poll officials’ explanations and promises, no matter how technically correct, didn’t get to the heart of the issue of public trust and perception.
What the Results Mean for Politics
Counting started at 23 official counting centers in Mumbai on January 16, 2026. The preliminary results showed that the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance was doing well. The first results showed that the ruling alliance was ahead in more than 130 wards. The BJP was ahead in about 99 seats, and the Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) was ahead in 31 seats.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) group had 72 seats. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena won 9 wards, and the Shiv Sena (UBT) won 62. The first counts showed that the Congress party was ahead in about 10 seats. The predictions said that the Mahayuti alliance will likely win a large majority in the BMC. If this happens, the BJP might get its first mayor in Mumbai who isn’t a member of the party.
Before the official counting started, exit polls showed that the Mahayuti alliance would win by a large margin. After then, leaders of the opposition complained that the alliance was celebrating too early. The Shiv Sena (UBT) and its followers said that the early celebrations of victory and the early trends were exactly as bad as what happened during the ink incident in a democracy.
What this implies for the country and for democracy
The BMC ink controversy is not just a local election issue; it raises big questions about democracy, the legitimacy of institutions, and how to keep people trusting the voting system. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum working together to change the basic rules of voting shows that they are concerned about the state of democracy as a whole.
The argument also shows how hard it is to mix new technologies with old ways of protecting votes. The SEC stated that electronic record-keeping made it impossible for anyone to vote again, no matter how excellent the ink was. But movies that showed ink that could be quickly removed had a stronger impact on how people felt about the issue than technical guarantees about backend systems.
Conclusion: Rebuilding Trust in Elections
The BMC elections ink controversy shows how quickly social media can make people question the fairness of elections and how easily people may lose faith in democratic institutions. The Maharashtra State Election Commission said that full protections stopped all kinds of voting fraud, no matter what kind of ink was used.
For the first time in more than four years, Mumbai is waiting for an elected mayor. The ink spill will probably still be a big issue in the BMC elections of 2026. This shows that when people don’t trust institutions, even small mistakes in how things are done can cause big political problems. The experience shows that for a democracy to succeed, the elections must be fair and honest. Also, the individuals in authority must know what people are worried about to keep their trust.
