Election Commission Says NOTA Option Is ‘Failed Idea’
In a Supreme Court hearing, the Election Commission (EC) has stated that the "none of the above" (NOTA) option available to voters on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) is a "failed idea." Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the EC, told the court that NOTA does not impact elections and that winning candidates are not affected by it.
The NOTA option was introduced in 2013 by a Supreme Court directive based on a 2004 public interest litigation filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. It sits last after the names of all candidates in an election and has its own symbol, a ballot paper with a black cross on it on EVMs.
In late 2013, the first elections to include NOTA as an option were the five Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Mizoram. The 2014 Lok Sabha elections were the first at a national level with NOTA in operation.
The Supreme Court had hoped that a NOTA vote would encourage political participation and persuade parties to consider their candidate choices more carefully. However, critics feel NOTA hasn’t resulted in systemic changes, owing to its inherent features. NOTA votes do not contribute towards the result as there is no provision for re-polling if NOTA gets the most votes in a constituency.
In March 2021, the Supreme Court issued notices to the Centre and the EC on a petition seeking that election results be nullified and fresh polls held if NOTA secures maximum votes. However, NOTA and the provisions on it remain unchanged.
Since 2014, the highest vote share for NOTA was recorded in 2024 in the Indore Lok Sabha constituency at 13.99%, making it the second-highest vote getter in the seat, which was won by the BJP. In Indore, Madhya Pradesh’s most populous constituency, the Congress candidate had withdrawn at the last minute, leaving the party without a nominee. Rather than back one of the 14 remaining candidates, the Congress launched an aggressive campaign asking voters to choose NOTA and teach the BJP "a lesson."
NOTA has played a considerable role in Bastar – in each of the last three Lok Sabha polls, NOTA polled the third highest votes behind the Congress and BJP candidates. In this seat, even notable parties like the BSP and CPI received fewer votes than NOTA. It’s a similar story in Gopalganj, where NOTA placed third in 2019 and 2024, and fourth in 2014. Notably, even the Dalit-oriented BSP was unable to outdo NOTA in the SC-reserved seat.
In fact, NOTA has exceeded 1% of the vote share in a seat in 709 instances since 2014; in the remaining 918 instances, NOTA failed to cross even 1% of the vote share.
On average, each seat has polled 11,609 NOTA votes since 2014. In 2014, the first Narendra Modi wave election, the average was 11,055 votes, going up to 12,017 in 2019 (when Modi-led BJP returned to power with a even bigger majority) before dropping to 11,756 in 2024 (when the Congress put up its best performance in three general elections).
In 2014, Puducherry saw NOTA get the highest vote share at 3.01%, followed by Meghalaya at 2.8%. That year, 20 states and UTs saw NOTA clear the 1% vote-share mark.
In 2019, Bihar had the highest NOTA vote share at 2%, with 17 states and UTs seeing NOTA’s vote share cross 1%. In 2024, Bihar again topped the country at 2.07% NOTA vote share, followed by Dadra and Nagar Haveli at 2.06%.
However, just 13 states and UTs recorded a NOTA vote share above 1% in 2024.
There is also a correlation between the number of candidates and NOTA’s vote share. Across the last three Lok Sabha polls, the seats with more candidates tended to see NOTA receive relatively fewer votes than in seats with fewer candidates. In seats that had more than 20 candidates, there was a marked drop-off in the number of NOTA votes, compared to seats with less than 20 candidates.
Over the last three Lok Sabha elections, NOTA has polled more votes than the winning margin – an indication of the option’s potential to swing an election outcome – on 64 occasions since 2014.
Reference : https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/as-nota-comes-under-question-numbers-show-its-diminishing-preference-among-voters-9981228/
