Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections 2017: NOTA gets more votes than national party BSP

Pic courtesy: PTI

Shimla: 0.9 percent voters in the Himachal Pradesh (over 33,000 voters) voted for the NOTA (none of the above). Interestingly, it was more than the national party BSP's vote share of 0.5 percent vote share.

BJP has got 48.7 percent votes as against the Congress' 41.8 percent, while independents got 6.3 percent. CPM managed to score more than the NOTA with 1.5 percent votes.

On the other hand, Gujarat voters have emerged to be twice as likely to reject all candidates in the fray, compared to their counterparts in Himachal Pradesh, with over 5.5 lakh in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state opting for the NOTA button.

In percentage terms, 1.8 percent voters in Gujarat pressed the NOTA button on electronic voting machines in Gujarat, as against 0.9 percent in the hill state (over 33,000 voters).

In case of Gujarat, the NOTA vote share was higher than that of any party other than the Congress and the BJP. While the BJP has secured over 49 percent votes, the Congress got nearly 41.4 percent and independents across the state together polled 4.3 percent.

CLICK HERE FOR RESULTS: Gujarat | Himachal Pradesh

The NOTA option enables a voter to officially and secretly register a vote of rejection of all contesting candidates.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when NOTA was introduced for the first time in any parliamentary election, close to 60 lakh voters (1.1 percent) opted for this option, which was more than the votes polled for more than 20 parties.

Before the introduction of EVMs, when voting was done through ballot papers, voters could put in the ballot paper without marking against any candidate thereby rejecting all candidates.

Such a vote was counted as a rejection. However, this rejection option was not available to voters on the EVM and therefore the NOTA button was introduced. 

(With Agency inputs)