Gujarat Elections 2017 | Over 5.5 lakh voters chose NOTA option

While Gujarat Assembly elections 2017 witnessed some of the most interesting trends not just in terms of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming back to power, though being nowhere close to its performance, and Congress improving its vote share, there is NOTA (None of the Above) too which has garnered voters attention. Over 5.5 lakh voters constituting 1.8% votes preferred NOTA, that allows voters not to choose for any of the candidates contesting in their constituency.

According to numbers released by the Election Commission, NOTA ranked in 1.8 per cent or 5,51,294 of all votes polled in the Gujarat Assembly election. Interestingly, NOTA ranked higher than parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) that contested the Gujarat elections as well.

Of the 29 seats of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), only three seats garnered votes more than NOTA whereas in the 26 seats, NOTA received more votes than AAP.

In Mandvi, nearly 5,000 votes were given to NOTA whereas Gujarat Chief Minister’s constituency Rajkot West had 3,309 votes to NOTA. Rapar in Kutch had 4,614 votes to NOTA whereas in Ghatlodia, 4,173 votes were given to NOTA.