Mysore Paints and Varnish Ltd. (MVPL):
- The MVPL, a Karnataka government company, has a monopoly on the manufacture of indelible ink since 1962, and is a major supplier to the Election Commission of India (ECI).
- It also exports the indelible ink for elections in other countries.
Invisible ink:
- Background: The indelible ink was formulated as a deterrent against voting twice. But voters in some countries people don’t want to display such a mark. So MVPL asked NPL to prepare the ‘invisible ink’ as part of a pilot project for use by a client country in Europe.
- Features:
- The invisible ink when applied on the finger, doesn’t leave a trace — it merely glows a bright orange when a low-intensity beam of ultraviolet light is shone on it.
- The chemical — a transparent liquid — is an “organic-inorganic” mixture that was biodegradable and could be washed off in 48 hours.
- The ink works on the principle of fluorescence — certain materials emit a characteristic glow when exposed to ultraviolet light. The NPL ink, however, glows only when exposed to a narrow band of frequencies of ultraviolet (UV) light.
- Way ahead:
- The ‘invisible ink’ was only at the discussion stage It may not find immediate application in Indian elections as they are spread out over many weeks.
- The NPL’s invisible ink experiment is linked to a larger project of creating security inks that could be used to make bank notes and documents, such as passports, more secure.