 "Indore LS poll: BJP wins by a record margin of over 1 mn; Nota runner-up")
Lok Sabha elections 2024 result: The Indore constituency in Madhya Pradesh has created two new records with its winning BJP candidate and incumbent MP Shankar Lalwani winning the seat by a record margin of over 1 million votes and the Nota option securing the runner up position with a record 218,674 votes.
Lalwani won the Indore constituency by a record margin of 11,75,092 votes and secured a total of 1,226,751 votes, the data available on the Election Commission’s website showed on Tuesday.
Both the developments are a first for any elections in India.
What is the impact of Nota on elections?
Nota or ‘None of the Above’ is an option available on the voting machine, which allows voters to formally express their rejection of all running candidates. It was introduced during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
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To be clear, the Nota option does not have any electoral value. Even if it gets the highest number of votes, the candidate getting the most of the remaining votes is declared the winner.
Congress had launched the Nota campaign in Indore
Lalwani’s huge victory comes as the Congress candidate from Indore, Akshay Kanti Bamb, had withdrawn his name from the election at the last moment and subsequently joined the BJP. In response, the Congress had launched a campaign asking the people to vote for Nota in a bid to “teach a lesson” to the BJP.
According to a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW), the highest number of Nota votes in Lok Sabha elections stood at 51,660 in Gopalganj (SC) constituency in Bihar.
Among state assembly elections, Nota has secured the highest percentage of votes in 2020 at 1.46 per cent (7,49,360 votes) in two state assembly elections of Bihar (7,06,252 votes) and NCT Delhi (43,108 votes).
Overall, a total of 129 million votes have been cast for Nota in the past five years in state and general elections, the report published in August 2022 said.
ADR has suggested that in cases when the votes polled for Nota are higher than all the contesting candidates then no candidates should be declared as elected and a fresh election should be conducted, in which none of the earlier candidates should be allowed to contest.