Bhopal, Nov. 16: People exchanging old currency notes at banks will not have their fingers marked with indelible ink in the two Madhya Pradesh constituencies where by-elections are scheduled on November 19.

State chief electoral officer Salina Singh today said she had told the collectors of the five districts that these constituencies touch not to enforce yesterday's Union finance ministry directive on the use of indelible ink at the banks.

"We don't want any mix-up on voting day," she told The Telegraph.

To avoid any mix-up, the finance ministry had asked the banks to mark the right index fingers of those exchanging notes, while at polling booths it's always the left index finger that is marked. The idea is to prevent the same person exchanging old notes multiple times at a time the long queues have prevented many from doing so even once.

A source in the Madhya Pradesh election commission, however, said the exemption granted to Shahdol Lok Sabha constituency and Nepanagar Assembly seat till Saturday's polling was meant to pre-empt any malpractice.

"Such left-hand-right-hand distinctions are all right for urban voters, who are better informed, but in rural constituencies we cannot rule out some voters being denied their right because one of their index fingers has already been marked," the official said.

Some of the district collectors who are to implement the exemption told this newspaper that the chief electoral officer had the authority to issue such an instruction overruling a finance ministry directive.

They added that they themselves had the right to enforce it in their capacity as district election officers.

Election Commission of India sources confirmed this but clarified that the commission had not asked its state representatives to block the marking of index fingers at banks in poll-bound constituencies.

"The Madhya Pradesh chief electoral officer must have acted on her own discretion," an Election Commission source said.

By-elections are scheduled in four parliamentary and eight Assembly seats on Saturday, including two Lok Sabha constituencies and one Assembly seat in Bengal. They might provide an early electoral test of the popularity of the demonetisation drive.

" Notebandi" (demonetisation) has become a key poll issue in Shahdol. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and at least seven of his ministers have in their poll speeches hailed the move as a "landmark" measure against black money.

But the Congress is highlighting the hardship caused to the rural poor and the farmers.

Shahdol constituency, situated on the Vindhyachal ranges and touching the districts of Anuppur, Umaria, Katni and Shahdol in the state's northeast, has mostly tribal and rural voters. Nepanagar, in Burhanpur district, is close to the Maharashtra border in the west.

Banking services outside Shahdol town are poor. On an average, a villager has to travel about 10km to access a bank. Of the 85 ATMs in the constituency, only 35 are functioning - for an average three hours a day before they run out of cash.

Ravindra Singh, a Shahdol resident, said demonetisation was a big electoral issue.

"It's causing a lot of hardship to the farmers and tribal people," he said, "who have to travel long distances across the hilly terrain, amid a shortage of transport facilities, to exchange the old notes."

Arvind Mishra, a local journalist, said that while some urban voters could see how demonetisation could boost the fight against black money, the rural voters could not understand why their payments and savings had suddenly become "illegal".

"Most villagers have not been able to exchange their old currency notes. The ongoing farming and wedding seasons have added to their ordeal," Mishra said, predicting a tough going for the BJP candidate.

The Shahdol by-election has been necessitated by the death of sitting BJP member Dalpat Singh Paraste. The BJP has fielded senior state minister Gyan Singh, who had represented Shahdol in the Lok Sabha twice, in 1996 and 1998.

The Congress candidate side is Hemadari Singh, daughter of Dalbir Singh and Rajesh Nandini who had won the seat a combined five times. Counting is scheduled for November 22.

In 2014, Paraste had defeated Nandini by over 240,000 votes. Both died this year less than six months apart, so any "sympathy wave" would be divided.

Former Union minister Kamal Nath, keen to jump into the ring of state politics ahead of the 2018 Assembly polls, is handling the Congress campaign.

The stakes are high for Chouhan too: last year, the BJP had conceded the Jhabua Lok Sabha seat to the Congress in a by-election.