The Dec 11 elections in five assemblies had one distinctive trend – a significant number of people voted ‘NOTA or none of the above option’.
In fact, the votes for NOTA were more than those for some political parties, including the AAP, CPI (M) and Samajwadi Party (SP). Though under current laws, even a 99% NOTA vote can’t defeat a candidate, it is one of the reasons that BJP’s cart was tipped especially in a state like Madhya Pradesh, where the winning margin was very narrow.
BJP won 109 seats in the state and Congress 114. While neither reached majority of 116 on their own, there is a possibility that if the voters had cast in favour of a political party, a clear winner would have emerged.
According to the Election Commission website NOTA votes ranged between 2.1 per cent in Chhattisgarh to 0.5 per cent in Mizoram.
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In Madhya Pradesh, for example, the vote share of the SP, 1.3 per cent, was lower than that of NOTA (1.4 per cent).
NOTA (2 per cent) also surpassed the Communist Party of India (0.3 per cent) in Chhattisgarh, while beating the Communist Party of India (Marxist) by 0.1 basis points in Rajasthan, where 1.3 per cent chose against voting for any candidate.
Barring Mizoram, all four states where the recent polls were held cast over 1 per cent of their votes for NOTA. The figure for Telangana was 1.1 per cent.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which fielded its candidates on 85 seats out of 90 seats in Chhattisgarh, got 0.9 per cent of votes while NOTA votes were 2.1 per cent of the counted votes in the state.
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Samajwadi Party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) got 0.2 per cent votes each in Chhattisgarh.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) got 0.3 per cent votes in the state.
In 2013, 3.06 per cent of Chhattisgarh’s voters had opted for NOTA (the highest ever for India), with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh clocking 1.92 and 1.9, respectively.