NOTA gets more votes than candidates

17,712 voters opt for the ‘None of The Above’ option, which was introduced in the elections for the first time this year

revelry:ABVP winning candidates (left) and their supporters celebrate their victory in the Delhi University Students' Union elections at North Campus; NSUI candidate Mohit Garid (centre) with his supporters on Saturday.Photos: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

While the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) are celebrating their victories in the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections, the result has also thrown light on a significant section of voters in the university who rejected all the candidates that were fielded by various students' outfits.

As many as 17,712 voters opted for the None of The Above (NOTA) option, introduced for the first time in the DUSU polls this year, which is higher than the votes won by any of the four winning candidates. The vote share of NOTA for all the four posts of DUSU, the results of which were announced on Saturday, ranged from 6.3 per cent to 12.6 per cent.

Students who chose NOTA expressed their joy at the widespread use of the option in the first year itself.

'Not fit for the job'

“It should be taken as a warning for the students’ groups to get their act together as muscle power and unusual show of wealth, which is not ‘student-like’, must stop. NOTA is liberating for us as we finally have a way to say – NO, none of you are fit for the job,” said Akshaya Gupta, a student of Hansraj college.

Chief Election Commissioner for the polls D.S. Rawat said: “The highest NOTA count was for the post of secretary where 5,616 votes were polled in the category, amounting to 12.6 per cent vote share. The lowest was for the president’s post where 3,021 votes were polled, which is 6.3 per cent vote share.”

The NOTA vote share for the vice-president and joint secretary posts was 8.8 per cent and 11.4 per cent, respectively.

The voting, which was held on Friday, saw a turnout of over 36.9 per cent of a total 1,23,246 voters in DU.

The turnout was a dip of seven per cent from last year’s 43.3 per cent.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Deependra Hooda, along with office-bearers of the party’s student wing NSUI, went on an indefinite hunger strike alleging discrepancies in counting of votes in the polls.

DU’s Election Commission maintained that the complaint has been forwarded to the university’s grievance cell, which deals with such issues.