What is NOTA?

What is NOTA?

Subject : Polity

Context: At least 14.79 per cent of the total voters who had exercised their franchise in the Andheri (East) Assembly by poll in Mumbai chose the None of The Above (NOTA) option, as per the data analysed on Sunday.

Concept:

• None Of the Above (NOTA) is a ballot option designed to allow the voter to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates in a voting system.
• It was introduced in India following the 2013 Supreme Court directive in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India judgment. Thus, India became the 14th country to institute negative voting.
• However, NOTA in India does not provide for a ‘right to reject’.
• The candidate with the maximum votes wins the election irrespective of the number of NOTA votes polled.

Why have NOTA if there’s ‘no electoral value’?

• NOTA gives people dissatisfied with contesting candidates an opportunity to express their
• This, in turn, increases the chances of more people turning up to cast their votes, even if they do not support any candidate, and decreases the count of bogus votes.
• Also, the Supreme Court has observed that negative voting could bring about “a systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates”.

NOTA in Rajya Sabha:

• The Supreme Court, in 2018, held that the NOTA option is meant only for universal adult suffrage and direct elections and not for polls held by the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote as done in the Rajya Sabha.
• The court held that making NOTA applicable in Rajya Sabha elections is contrary to Article 80(4) of the constitution and the Supreme Court’s judgment in PUCL v Union of India (2013).
• It is because NOTA defeats the fairness in indirect elections, it ignores the role of an elector in such an election and destroys democratic values and encourages malpractices like defection and corruption.