Had it been a party, the NOTA would have secured third largest vote share after the BJP and the Congress in the Gujarat assembly elections.
Gujarat voters have emerged to be twice as likely to reject all candidates in the fray, compared to their counterparts in Himachal Pradesh, with over 5.5 lakh in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state opting for the NOTA (None of the above) button.
In percentage terms, 1.8% voters in Gujarat pressed the NOTA button on electronic voting machines in Gujarat, as against 0.9% in the hill state (over 33,000 voters).
In case of Gujarat, the NOTA vote share was higher than that of any party other than the Congress and the BJP. While the BJP has secured over 49% votes, the Congress got nearly 41.4% and independents across the state together polled 4.3%.
According to Times of India, NOTA option made its presence felt quite significantly, exceeding the margin of victory or defeat in 29 constituencies, which is about one out of six.
NOTA being higher than the victory margin cuts both ways. Of the 29 seats where this was the case, the BJP won 15, but the Congress won 13 too, and an Independent one seat.
In Himachal Pradesh, BJP has got 48.7% votes as against the Congress' 41.8%, while independents got 6.3%. The CPM also managed to score more than NOTA with 1.5% votes.
In Gujarat, chief minister Vijay Rupani's Rajkot-West seat, the NOTA votes were more than 3,300, while the same in Vadgam (where Congress-supported independent Jignesh Mevani won) were over 4,200. In Godhra also, NOTA counted over 3,000.
The NOTA option enables a voter to officially and secretly register a vote of rejection of all contesting candidates.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when NOTA was introduced for the first time in any parliamentary election, close to 60 lakh voters (1.1%) opted for this option, which was more than the votes polled for more than 20 parties.
Before the introduction of EVMs, when voting was done through ballot papers, voters could put in the ballot paper without marking against any candidate thereby rejecting all candidates. Such a vote was counted as a rejection. However, this rejection option was not available to voters on the EVM and therefore the NOTA button was introduced.
(With PTI inputs)
