The NOTA option — exercised by voters to express their disenchantment with candidates in the poll fray — played a decisive role in four Assembly segments in Kerala, polling more than the winners’ victory margins.
Scraping throughAs a result, the winners in Peerumade, Kasaragod, Koduvally, and Wadakkancherry recorded victory margins of less than 1,000 votes.
In Wadakkancherry, where a faulty electronic voting machine delayed the declaration of results, the Congress’s Anil Akkara won by 43 votes while NOTA polled 969 votes.
Peerumade — where the CPI’s sitting MLA E.S. Bijimol trumped the Congress’s Syriac Thomas by 314 votes — saw 448 votes polled for NOTA.
The performances of the BSP candidate, who got 489 votes, and the AIADMK candidate, who polled 2,862 votes, also proved critical there.
In Kasaragod, 646 voters hit the NOTA button on the EVM, reducing the victory margin of the IUML’s P.B. Abdul Razak to just 89 votes. The BJP’s K. Surendran finished runner-up.
In Koduvally, where Left-backed Independent candidate Karat Razack posted a victory margin of 573 votes, 582 voters favoured no one.
Outgoing Minister Manjalamkuzhi Ali of the IUML, who was contesting for the Perinthalmanna seat, recorded a victory margin of 579 while NOTA was the preferred choice of 507 voters.
Overall, the Assembly polls in Kerala this time recorded a whopping 1,07,239 NOTA votes, about 0.53 per cent of the total votes polled.
