CHOICE of NOTA: YES or NO?

During the 2019 Loksabha Election, nearly 6.5 million people opted for the None of The Above (NOTA) option. This is more than the population of Ahmedabad. NOTA, or “None of the Above”, is the option that allows the voter to officially register a vote of rejection for all candidates who are contesting.

“The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL)`, a Delhi-based non-profit filed a Public Interest Litigation to favor NOTA. Finally, on September 27, 2013, the Supreme Court of India applied the right to register a vote of ‘None of the Above’ in the elections, which then ordered the Electoral Commission that all voting machines should have a button for NOTA to give voters the choice to vote for ‘none of the above’.

The NOTA option was first used in the 2013 assembly elections of four states (Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh), and the Union Territory of Delhi. Since its introduction, NOTA has gained increasing popularity amongst the Indian electorate and secured more votes than the victory margin. For instance in the Assembly Elections, Gujarat witnessed more NOTA votes than winning margins in as many as 30 constituencies while Rajasthan and MP experienced a similar effect in 15 and 22 constituencies, respectively.

In 2014 Lok Sabha, NOTA option was exercised by nearly 60 lakh people- equalling about 1.1 percent of the total votes polled during those elections across 543 seats. In 2019, this number increased to 65,14,558- which means approx 8.5% increase.The highest percentage of NOTA in Lok Sabha Election 2019 was recorded in the state of Bihar with 2% of voters (8,17,139) opting for it. In Uttar Pradesh, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats, 7,25,079 voters opted for NOTA.

In the recent Bihar State Assembly Elections 2020, nearly 7 lakhs voters(1.7%) used the NOTA option. There were several seats in Bihar where the NOTA option got more votes than the winning margin of candidates. Many political parties fetched fewer votes than NOTA. In 2015, NOTA received 9,47,279of the 3,81,20,124 valid votes equalling 2.48% of the vote share.

So by simple arithmetic, imagine if 15% of constituencies in the upcoming West Bengal election witness the same effect. This would mean that NOTA voters contributed to electing a new government without taking any onus for electing the government. Going by these figures, one can conclude that the effects of NOTA were unhealthy for our seemingly healthy democracy. In many countries, people are yearning for their right to vote, While people in our country don’t want to exercise their right to vote in true spirit. The very intention of the Supreme Court of India was to force the political parties to project candidates with a clean background as their candidates. But in our country, people are using this option as a tool to show their right to dissent. If this option of ‘None of the above’ is implemented with its true intent, the whole political scenario of the country will drastically change from the present scenario. It also gives the citizen the satisfaction of exercising his right to choose. But one can also not neglect its misuse by voters who can easily be swayed by cynicism and won’t carefully look at the options available to the — lesser-known but the worthy candidates could be overlooked, and also the undesirable candidates could come into power because NOTA has no electoral value.

If we go by the analysis of NOTA vote trends published in The Hindu, some interesting points that emerge are:-

1) Constituencies reserved for SC and ST saw higher NOTA vote.

2) Areas affected by Left-wing extremism saw the rise in NOTA vote share. This shows the possible use of NOTA as a tool to protest against the state.

3) NOTA votes are comparatively higher in constituencies where it was a direct contest between the two main national parties — the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Former Chief Election Commissioner of India S.Y. Quraishi, had observed in an article of The Statesman: “Even if there are 99 NOTA votes out of a total of 100, and candidate X gets just one vote, X is the winner, having obtained the only valid vote. The rest will be treated as invalid or ‘no votes.”. Thus NOTA in India is a toothless option and not a ‘Right to Reject’.

Petitioner Tranquebar Dorai Vasu, a city-based advocate have submitted a petition for the EC to frame rules to the effect that if NOTA, which enables a voter to reject all candidates, gets a majority, the election held to the particular constituency shall be declared null and void and fresh polls be conducted. The petitioner submitted that under the present system, there was no sanctity of NOTA votes. In November 2018, the State Election C of Haryana declared that NOTA would be treated as a fictional candidate and re-elections would be conducted if NOTA won the majority vote in the Municipal Elections in December 2018. And candidates securing votes less than NOTA would be barred from contesting in that re-election.

Thus the idea behind it was to push the entire system in the direction of better representativeness among the elected representatives and encouraging political parties to put up better candidates. But, as of now, NOTA is like a toothless tiger. Since it’s gaining popularity among voters, it’s high time to make NOTA more effective and of electoral value.

Tanupriya is currently pursuing Masters in Conflict Management and Development from Banaras Hindu University. Her interest areas are Politics, Economics, International Relations and Urban Governance.