One of the candidates in Afghanistan's presidential election has called for polling to be halted after he was able to clean off the ink marking on his finger supposed to ensure against voter fraud.

Ramazan Bashardost, a former planning minister, standing on an anti-corruption platform, made a formal complaint after voting at a high school in the capital, Kabul, on Thursday. 

"Ramazan Bashardost is taking this extremely seriously, he has lodged a formal complaint and he wants voting stopped straight away," Al Jazeera's James Bays, who was at the polling station as the MP made the discovery, said.

"There were two other candidates also in that polling station and they saw what happened. An angry crowd gathered ... very concerned about this."

Voters are required to dip thir finger into a pot of ink after casting the ballots in order to prevent them from voting again at another polling station. 

Ink stain

Al Jazeera has seen footage from three different polling stations across Kabul where voters were able to remove the ink, which is supposed to leave a stain for about two weeks, shortly after leaving the polling booth. 

"We've spoken to the election complaints commission and the independent elections commission," Al Jazeera's Bays said.

"The election complaints commission chairman, the first he had heard of this was when I called him, but they say they have noted the problem and they will see if the can deal with it.

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"I also spoke to some international election observers who are watching this and they believe that what might have happened is that they mixed the ink wrongly in this polling station."

With about 17 million people eligible to vote in 6,500 polling stations across the country it was unclear how widespread the apparent problem might be.

Shukria Barakzai, an Afghan MP, acknowledged that the allegations could be a huge problem for the presidential and provincial elections, but said it must first be clarified how many polling stations have been affected.

"From my understanding, and from my own pint of view, it maybe be just one or two or three specific centres where people may want to manipulate the process," she said.

"There are other ways in which people will be stopped from casting more than one vote, their card number must be registered.

"For sure there will be lots of shortcomings, but what is important for me and for the nation, we have to practice democracy."