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AN INDIAN MAN chopped off his index finger in desperation after voting for the wrong party in the country’s national election.
Pawan Kumar became confused by the symbols on the electronic voting machine and voted for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party instead of its regional rival in Uttar Pradesh state yesterday, his brother told AFP.
Distraught, the 25-year-old Kumar went home and chopped off his finger with a meat cleaver.
Even though votes are cast electronically at polling stations, the index finger of every voter is marked with indelible ink after they cast ballots, to make sure they do not vote again.
“He was very happy that he was voting for the first time ever,” Kumar’s brother Kailash Chandra told AFP by phone.
But once he realised his mistake, he was so distraught that he chopped off his inked finger.
“Every time he saw his ink-marked finger, he felt angry.”
Chandra said the family rushed Kumar to the hospital, and videos circulating online showed the first-time voter sporting a bandaged hand standing over the butcher’s knife outside a toilet.
“I wanted to vote for elephant but it went to flower,” Kumar says on one video, adding that he had not been pressured to cast his ballot for a particular party.
The lotus is the symbol of the Bharatiya Janata Party while the Bahujan Samaj Party, part of an alliance fighting Modi in the northern state, uses the elephant. The party symbol is used on voting machines along with the candidate’s photographs.
Thursday was the second day of India’s marathon election which started on April 11 and runs through to May 19.
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We/government owned 99%, so if AIB have 28% When did they repay 27% of their loan? It would also be nice to see the tax payer get part of the loan back too.
@Rob Cunningham: It wasn’t a loan. We (i.e. the state) effectively bought AIB shares, which have since been sold back into the market, hence we now hold 71% of AIB. A share buyback could reduce this slightly but we will remain majority shareholders.
So now that it is turning a profit its time to sell the governments share to private individuals until it goes belly up again. The government can buy it back and bail out the shareholders agian then is it? If it is making more money for the state than the interest on the loans to bail it out surely it would make more sense for the state to keep it.
So can they look after our USC repayments now?
Great, does that mean they will get rid of USC? Remember the temporary tax?
@Míleata Watch Co: mm literally said in the last two weeks that they wouldn’t do away with usc because the country can’t afford to! Such nonsense!
Why sell a profitable asset? Add its profits towards a sovereign wealth fund after we have been payed back twice what we spent.
Why sell the shares back when making profit?
Why not use the profit to help give those renting get a mortgage and own their own home?
I’d like reimbursement for my shares thanks
Let them buy it back at €6 a share if they want them that badly.
Profit my foot. Loans written down to tiny fractions of original amounts being paid off as small landlords sell off their properties now at new values, is not profit. And we wonder why there is a housing crisis.
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