The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 starts today and before casting a vote, it is our duty to know everything related to elections and one of them is NOTA, many of us know what NOTA means but we don’t know it’s true power. In many countries NOTA has a lot of power, but its not the same of India, and this is the reason why.
NOTA is a ballot option provided in the elections to Indian voters. Through NOTA, a citizen has the right to not vote for any candidate contesting the elections. The NOTA option was first used in the 2013 assembly elections held in four states which are Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and the Union Territory, Delhi.
NOTA also known as None Of The Above is the power which can make and break a government in many different countries, In 2018 at a mayor elections elections in Indonesia’s Makassar there was only one candidate standing for the elections, the other option was to choose NOTA. NOTA received more votes and defeated the candidate. Now there will be re-elections. This this the true power of NOTA.
In any country the significance of NOTA is the same, it means people dislike all of the existing candidates and if NOTA gets the majority, ideally all the existing candidates should be dismissed and there be re-elections.
However, this does not happens in India, NOTA does not hold a major importance in our country. If NOTA gets majority in our country it does not guarantee the dismissal of existing candidates or re-elections. NOTA is just a way of giving negative feedback and sending the message across the politicians that we dislike of you as a candidate. For politicians, this has created a vote bank. When politicians get to know that people dislike them, they start making changes to get more votes.
However, recently we have seen some changes. In October 2018, Maharashtra’s state election commission passed an order, that if NOTA gets majority there will be re-elections. On November Haryana election commission also passed the same order. The reason behind this could be that some months ago during the panchayat elections in Maharashtra, there were many seats where NOTA won a majority. NOTA received 85% votes in a village in Pune.
But this is just a start, if the same order is passed nationwide it can bring major changes and NOTA will have have a lot of importance. A study published by the economic and political weekly shows that between 2013 and 2016, the highest amount of NOTA voting came from tribal areas specifically in seats reserved from scheduled tribes. This shows that people from general category were choosing the NOTA option to avoid voting for this candidate. NOTA vote in this case reflects a discrimination among people.
In 2017, during the elections in Gujarat, in 20 and more constituencies the winning margin between the first and second candidates was lower than the total number of NOTA votes. This shows that NOTA votes can have a huge impact on election results.
