Over 60 lakh None Of The Above (NOTA) votes were cast in the 16th Lok Sabha elections, the first time that this option was given, Election Commission data shows. This accounts for 1.1 per cent of all the votes cast. The disproportionately high use of NOTA in reserved constituencies continues, a trend first identified by The Hindu after the 2013 Assembly elections.
Experts The Hindu spoke to had indicated that the high use of NOTA in reserved constituencies could be on account of upper caste candidates preferring to vote for no one to voting for a Dalit or tribal candidate.
On average, over 10,000 votes were cast in every constituency. In 46 constituencies, over 20,000 NOTA votes were cast. All but one of the ten constituencies in which the most NOTA votes were cast were reserved constituencies, eight of them for the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and one for the Scheduled Castes (SCs).
Over twice as many NOTA votes were cast in ST constituencies than in ‘General’ constituencies, The Hindu found; nearly 20,000 votes were cast on average in ST constituencies. While more NOTA votes were cast in SC constituencies too than in General constituencies, the difference was less.
The proportion of the negative votes was higher than the national average in Chhattisgarh (1.9 per cent), Gujarat (1.8 per cent), Jharkhand (1.5 per cent), with the highest of all in the two ST constituencies in Meghalaya. The number of NOTA votes was the highest of all in the SC constituency of Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu (over 46,000 votes), where the margin of victory between the AIADMK candidate and the DMK’s A Raja was over 1 lakh votes. In the Nilgiris, NOTA got more votes than the Congress candidate.
In South Bangalore, NOTA votes cast were more than the votes received by the hardline right-winger Pramod Muthalik, who contested as an Independent.
Despite being widely seen as an option that will empower the educated voter, the proportion of NOTA was lower than the national average in States and UTs such as Chandigarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh, and only slightly above the national average in Kerala (1.2 per cent).
