All Are Useless Fellas – NOTA – a Scratch vote
There is no legal enforceability, when it comes to Right to vote in India. There is No arrests, if an individual does not utilize his Right to vote. But it is a Social responsibility of a citizen, to vote for a candidate of his choice and no conflict arises to contravene on this topic.
But, if one is asked to vote to the candidates in the list provided, a situation arises wherein a citizen is being forced to select any one of the candidates provided in the list. What if he or she does not want to, or like to vote to any of those candidates mentioned on the ballot? This is one case where a concept called NOTA comes into picture or it becomes contextual to discuss about NOTA, which means None Of The Above. To define NOTA, means “None Of The Above” option which facilitates the citizen to vote or register a vote of rejection for all candidates who are contesting.
A voter may sit at his home without voting if he does like any of the candidates in the ballot provided, but the message that a citizen is not interested to vote to any of the candidates is not conveyed. NOTA is a form of protest against the candidates, or the Political system prevailing in the Country.
In the context of Rule 49 (O) of Conduct of Election Rules – Questioning secrecy of voting, in 2013, as per Supreme Court’s Judgment, NOTA has been introduced; so that performing your social responsibilityby voting is sufficed and your protest in the form NOTA is conveyed. But there is no real sanctity for NOTA, as it is not a person or an individual.
The 17th Lok Sabha elections witnessed 1.06 percent of NOTA, conveying their protest against all the candidates in a constituency. The contested political parties are 36 in Total and as much as 15 contested parties got much less votes than NOTA, which gave a clear cut indication of disapproval of their candidature in a particular constituency.
The context of NOTA came into picture in the year 2013, by the Supreme Court’s judgement in People’s Union for Civil liberties (PUCl) & Anr Vs Union of India & Anr, where directions were given to the Election Commission of India to include the NOTA option/button to EVMs.
The NOTA made its presence profoundly, by the below political parties.
Bihar witnessed 817,139 voters using the NOTA option, being the highest in the country. The Election Commission’s website states, the NOTA votes in the state are 2 per cent of the total votes out of 40 Lok Sabha constituencies.
- Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s won 6 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, but because of NOTA, LJP received only 0.52 per cent of the total votes. (A crystal clear protest via NOTA)
- The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD),
- the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen,
- the Communist Party of India (CPI) and
- the Apna Dal won 2 Lok Sabha seats each, but got less than 1 percent of the total votes polled in this elections.
Nearly 7 political parties with a single seat each in the Lok Sabha could only gain very less per cent of the vote i.e., than half a percent.
- The All Jharkhand Students Union has acquired 0.11 percent votes and
- the Revolutionary Socialist Party got 0.12 percent votes, 5 other parties got even lesser percentage of votes.
- The Kerala Congress -Mani got only 0.07 percent of the total votes,
- the Mizo National Front received 0.04 per cent and the Naga Peoples Front 0.06 per cent.
- Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party got only 0.08 percent and the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha 0.03 per cent of the total votes.
The purpose of NOTA is to give the voter the right to protest against the candidates of any political parties. Supreme court’s thought on NOTA was also that when such candidates are being rejected by the citizens, there will be every chance for the political parties to realise that majority number of citizens are expressing their disapproval of the candidates being put up by the political parties and this will initiate a systemic change and such political parties will be at the behest of NOTA, of the Citizens.