(Image source from: Voter selfie wave storming social media})

Forget Modi wave! The 2014 Lok Sabha elections is awashed with the voter celeb selfie tsunami now. The ongoing election season in India has sparked off a new trend - that of posting selfies of the inked finger. And all the Bollywood celebs worth their pink rock salt manicure can't wait to get their inked digits Instagrammed, Facebooked or tweeted. Yes, voter selfie is indeed the new cool!

The electoral stain on the forefinger is meant to prevent fraud like double voting. But in a digital age like  ours, it has become more of an embellishment, an indelible proof that the socialite has a social conscience and is well aware of his/her civic duties. All thanks to social media, the celebs have a perfect platform to yell to the world, “Hey Look I Voted too!"

Voting is undone without the voting selfie now. There was a time when the act of voting ended inside the booth. But no more. Now the act of casting the ballot is simply incomplete without a selfie moment.

So there we have Amitabh Bachchan wrapped in a cozy Pashmina amid Mumbai heat-wave sticking out his inked finger for the world to see. Preity Zinta held her inked finger close to her pout as if to say “Shhh, I am voting!”

Even the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sussanne Khan, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Kajol and Ajay Devgn held out their finger for a voter selfie. Shah Rukh Khan went to vote in his Kolkata Knight Riders t-shirt indicating that the IPL was as much his civic duty as voting. Later, he put up a cool black and white selfie with his voter mark that fetchingly matched his facial hair. After all, voter selfie is the coolest thing at this moment. No wonder, many “aam aadmis” have followed suit, flooding timelines with their own voting selfies.

We don’t know about the Modi tsunami, but there is certainly a voter selfie wave among the enthusiastic voters.

Originally, a selfie was meant to document a moment when no one else was around to snap it for you. In that way, the act of voting is exactly a selfie-moment. Sadly, mobile phones are banned inside the booth. So people push it to posterity to display the world their civic coolness by posting a pic of their indelibly inked finger later. Makes sense?

AW: Suchorita Choudhury