Very recently the Election Commission has issued instructions for Chief Electoral Officers of states and Union Territories to introduce the "None of the Above" (NOTA) option during polls to enable voters to exercise their right to not vote for any particular candidate while maintaining secrecy. Many have hailed this decision as a landmark decision, which will herald a new form of electorate politics in India.
Is it really a great achievement? Well not really – let us analyse and understand why.
The EC has clarified, very recently, that choosing the NOTA option has the same effect as not voting for any candidate and therefore, 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.
So we are back to square one. Whether the voter decides to go to the polling booth and choose the NOTA option on the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) or stay at home, there is no impact on the final election result. In a country where on an average 35% to 40% of the electorate does not exercise its franchise, the introduction of the NOTA option in the EVM’s has no meaning at all.
In India electoral victory is based on the doctrine of “majoritarianism” – under which the winning candidate need not get in excess of half of the votes polled to be declared the winner. To emerge as the winner, all the candidate needs is to get the maximum votes as compared to the rivals. In simple words, ours is a democracy where a candidate wins not because the majority wants him to win but mainly because the majority does not want the other contestants to win. On many occasions it is observed that candidates who have secured only 35% of the votes polled, have emerged as a winner and that too when only 60% of the eligible voters exercised their franchise. This means that only 21% of the eligible voters in the constituency actually wanted the candidate to be their representative. The candidate has won only because the remaining 79% either did not vote or wanted some one else as their representative. This sounds ridiculous but is true.
The introduction of NOTA option will not alter the ridiculous system of democracy we follow. So until and unless NOTA is declared an official candidate, political parties will not be worried about this new development and this will only remain a statistical number.
