The "None of the Above" option was chosen by a 5,68,809 lakh voters accounting for 1.4 per cent vote share in Tamil Nadu, reflecting deep voter disenchantment with main stream political parties.
The NOTA usage in Tamil Nadu, which has 5.50 crore electorate, is higher when compared with some of the other states, acccording to Election Commission statistics.
While Delhi registered 0.5 per cent of NOTA votes, neigbouring states of Karnataka (0.8 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (0.7 per cent) had almost same "none of the above option" users.
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In Tamil Nadu, the Nilgiris constituency topped NOTA usage with 46,559 votes. In this seat, DMK leader A Raja was trounced by a huge margin of 1,04,940 votes by AIADMK nominee. It is also the constituency where BJP nominee Gurumurthy's nomination was rejected and the party went without representation.
The saffron party enjoys considerable support in several pockets of this constituency.
Apart from Nilgiris, several other constituencies had huge NOTA votes though not on the same scale as the hill seat. While Chennai South and Central seats had about 20,000 NOTA votes each and North Chennai had over 13,000 such votes.
Similarly, Sriperumbudur 27,676, Tiruchirappalli 22,848, Tiruvallur 23,598 and Coimbatore 17,428 had significantly higher number of NOTA votes.
Arakonam (10370), Chidambaram (12,138) Kallakurichi (10,901), Kancheepuram (17,736), Karur (13,763) Nagapattinam (15,662), Tenkasi (14,492), Thoothukudi (11,447), Tirunelveli (12,893), Tirupur (13,941), Vellore (7,100), Thanjavur (12,218), Cuddalore (10,338), Tiruvallur (23,598), Perambalur (11,605), Villupuram (11,440), Dindigul (10,591), Theni (10312), Virudhunagar (12,225), and Arani (9,304) also registered significant NOTA votes.
