Men’s Activists campaign for NOTA vote in Karnataka State Elections
None of the Above or NOTA vote is turning out to be a powerful weapon for those people, who are sildelined by politicians focusing on traditional vote banks around castes, religions, ethnicity and women.
In states of Gujarat and Bihar the NOTA vote was 2.48% and 1.8% respectively and NOTA votes are now 3rd or 4th most polled votes in any election.
As politicians from BJP and Congress are trying to woo women voters and continue with laws and policies which openly discriminate men and their parents, men’s activists are now calling for NOTA vote.
BENGALURU: A group of Men’s Rights Activisms has launched a campaign against what they term “reckless governance”, ignoring the rights of men.
Having voted for different parties in the previous elections, the group on Saturday kick-started a campaign to convince constituents from across 27 segments in the city to consider exercising the option of NOTA (None Of The Above) in the ensuing elections.
Sujith Deshpande, one of the organisers, said: “The problem is that if you talk about men’s rights, people assume that your are against women. That’s not the case. All that we are saying is that society is made up of both men and women, and it is the duty of the governments to look into welfare of all. This is not happening right now, which is why we want people to convey that to parties by not picking any one of their candidates.”
The group, which is hoping to bring in 20 people each from all major cities for the purpose, plans door-to-door campaigns and protests. “Now, the average NOTA percentage is 2%. We want to take this to 3% or more, because then we would be able to affecting the victories and losses in some constituencies,” Anil Kumar, a techie, said.
