'NOTA could be effective only if...': Ex-CEC Rawat explains this voting option as Indore votes in Phase 4

The Indore Lok Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh will vote tomorrow in the fourth phase. Here, Congress candidate Akshay Kanti Bam pulled out of the race just before the elections and joined the BJP, prompting the grand old party to appeal to the people to press the NOTA option on EVMs during polling on May 13 to teach the "saffron party a lesson".

On Sunday, however, former Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat said that in the present situation, NOTA has only symbolic significance and cannot have an impact on the election result of any seat. He said in an election, if 99 votes out of 100 go to NOTA and a candidate gets only one vote, "still the candidate, and not NOTA, will be declared the winner". 

Rawat said if more than 50 per cent of the voters in a seat favour NOTA, only then there is a point in thinking of making this voting option legally effective on the election results. 

"More than 50 per cent of electors will have to once opt for NOTA in a seat to show the political community that they do not consider candidates with criminal background or other undeserving ones worthy of their votes. Only after this, pressure on Parliament and the Election Commission will increase and they will have to think about changing laws to make NOTA effective on the election results," he said. 

The Congress is out of the electoral race for the first time in the 72-year history of the Indore Lok Sabha seat. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Indore recorded a 69 per cent turnout with 5,045 voters opting for NOTA. 

The 'NOTA' button was introduced on the electronic voting machines in September 2013 following the Supreme Court's directions to discourage parties from fielding tainted candidates. 

Anil Verma, head of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an electoral reform advocacy group, said that in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, NOTA got an average of less than two per cent votes. "To take the NOTA option to the next level, it should be made legally powerful. We believe that if NOTA gets more votes than polled by the candidates in any seat, then the election should be cancelled and a fresh poll should be conducted with new candidates."

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 'NOTA' got the maximum votes in the Gopalganj seat of Bihar where 51,660 electors favoured this option and it received around five per cent of the total votes.

(With inputs from PTI)