 "Supreme Court’s notice to Election Commission on NOTA: Understanding voters’ right to reject")
The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a plea calling for fresh elections if the ’none of the above’ (NOTA) option gets maximum votes. A petition was filed by writer and motivational speaker Shiv Khera seeking directions to declare polls in a constituency “null and void” where most electors choose NOTA.
The plea also sought to bar candidates, who lost to NOTA, from contesting the elections for five years. A three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, on Friday (26 April) asked the poll body to analyse the rules around NOTA, reported NDTV.
What is NOTA? Why was it introduced? What happens if NOTA gets the maximum votes? Let’s take a closer look.
What’s NOTA?
Voters have the option to select the NOTA option on the electronic voting machine (EVM) if they do not like any of the candidates fighting election from their constituency.
NOTA empowers the electors to express their negative opinions and a lack of support for the contenders. It gives them the right to reject while maintaining the secrecy of their decision.
The button for NOTA is available at the bottom of all the EVMs.
Even before EVMs were brought, electors had the option to not vote for any candidate. As per an Economic Times (ET) report, when polling was carried out through ballot papers, voters had the option to put the ballot paper without marking against any candidate.
Rule 49-O of Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961, states, “If an elector after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsAfter the EVMs came, there was no requirement to file Form 49-O or get the presiding officer’s permission, ET reported.
Why was NOTA introduced?
In September 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of including the ‘none of the above’ option in ballots, mandating the ECI to incorporate a button for NOTA in all EVMs.
“Negative voting will lead to a systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates. If the right to vote is a statutory right, then the right to reject a candidate is a fundamental right of speech and expression under the Constitution,” a bench headed by the then CJI P Sathasivam said at the time, as per News18.
This was aimed to bring greater participation in the electoral exercise. The top court order mentioned that the inclusion of NOTA would compel political parties to nominate better candidates, reported India Today.
NOTA was first available during the Assembly elections in Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh in 2013.
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What happens if NOTA gets the most votes?
NOTA does not hold any arithmetic value in the final tally. As India Today noted, the option gives the voters the right to reject without directly affecting the electoral outcome.
In case the NOTA option gets the most polled votes, it does not lead to re-polling and the candidate with the second-highest number of votes is declared the winner.
The Election Commission says, “Even if, in any extreme case, the number of votes against NOTA is more than the number of votes secured by the candidates, the candidate who secures the largest number of votes among the contesting candidates shall be declared to be elected.”
What does the plea in the Supreme Court say?
The petition has sought directions for the ECI to frame rules around NOTA and called for reporting and publicising NOTA as a “fictional candidate”.
“The option of NOTA in the Electronic Voting Machines is the result of ‘right to reject’ possessed by the voter in our electoral system… NOTA is seen as a right to reject belonging to the citizen in the present dispensation,” the petition says, as per India Today.
The petitioner Khera stated that the idea behind NOTA was to press parties to field better candidates. “There continue to be instances when almost all candidates in a constituency have had pending criminal cases. What does a voter do? NOTA is a potent weapon in the hands of the voter.”
Representing the petitioner, senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan brought up the recent case of Surat where a BJP candidate was declared the winner without polling as the nomination of the Congress candidate was rejected and the other candidates withdrew from the contest.
The petitioner stressed that the election should still be held even if there is just one candidate in the fray, adding that people should have the option to vote for NOTA.
Issuing a notice to the poll body, the Supreme Court said: “This is about the electoral process also. Let us see what the Election Commission has to say on this.”
The development comes as India is currently organising the world’s largest general election.
With inputs from agencies
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