As many as 1,85,397 voters opted for NOTA in Jharkhand during the recently concluded General Elections and 159 candidates secured fewer votes than NOTA in their respective constituencies, data available on the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) official website reveals.
The candidates who got fewer votes than NOTA in their constituency form nearly 70 per cent of the total 229 candidates who contested the polls in Jharkhand.
The number of NOTA votes cast in Khunti and Lohardaga constituencies, where the BJP won by a thin margin, was higher than the victory margin in the respective constituencies. In Khunti, BJP’s former chief minister Arjun Munda defeated Congress party’s Kali Charan Munda by a thin margin of 1,145 votes, whereas the NOTA button was pressed by as many as 21,245 voters in the constituency reserved for tribal candidates. Lohardaga witnessed a similar trend, where BJP’s Sudarshan Bhagat defeated Congress party’s Sukhdeo Bhagat by a margin of 10,363 votes, 120 less than the number of NOTA votes cast.
At least 11 of 14 candidates in Lohardaga and Khunti constituencies got fewer votes than NOTA. At least 17 of 26 candidates in Chatra were defeated by NOTA, while seven of nine candidates lost to NOTA in Singhbhum. On an average, more than half of the candidates in each of the 14 constituencies lost to NOTA in Jharkhand this elections.
According to ECI, the highest number of NOTA votes, 31,164, was cast in Koderma constituency, where Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Annapurna Devi defeated Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) chief Babulal Marandi by nearly five lakh votes.
As many as 229 candidates contested the elections for the 14 parliamentary constituencies in the tribal State this year. The NDA clean swept the state by winning 12 of 14 Lok Sabha seats.
NOTA, which stands for ‘None Of The Above’ is an option provided in the elections to voters who do not find any candidate worthy of representing the people. Through NOTA, a voter gets to reject all the candidates in fray and yet exercise his franchise. Earlier, in order to cast a negative ballot, a voter had to inform the presiding officer at the polling booth. Now the voter has to just press the NOTA option on the EVM. The NOTA option was first used in the 2013 assembly elections held in four states — Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh—and one union territory, Delhi.
For now, NOTA only plays a symbolic role in the elections. While parties may lose votes to NOTA, there is no way it can directly affect the results in any particular parliamentary constituency or assembly segment.
