THIS TIME round, show them the middle finger. You may have reason to, as a seasoned voter who’s seen very little change on the ground after the heady speeches, promises, eye candy and campaigning dust fly in your face every five years.
The Election Commission is ensuring your message goes out loud and clear — they are giving your index finger a go-by, and painting your middle finger with indelible ink instead. A Commission official said the change was necessitated by the recently-concluded elections to local bodies in some parts of the country. “Since these voters will still have their index fingers marked, we decided to uniformly mark the middle finger of the left hand,” he said.
Not everyone’s amused, though. In many places, politicians and celebrities smiled and posed for the cameras after casting their vote, but realisation dawned much later. A Pune-based Bollywood celebrity said, “I did not realise it when I posed for the cameras. But when I saw the photo, my pose appeared to be in poor taste.”
In 2005, Australian Greg Chappell, former coach of the Indian cricket team, had triggered a furore when he showed the finger to Sourav Ganguly’s fans at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
All that may be in the past. Pictures of many celebrities and politicians, including Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan and Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and their wives showing middle fingers were splashed across newspapers.
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