NOTA sees a drop: highest in Anushakti Nagar, lowest in Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar

Anushakti Nagar saw the highest NOTA votes in Mumbai at 2.66%. Overall, NOTA votes in Maharashtra dropped to 0.72% this election.

Mumbai: The closely contested seat of Anushakti Nagar had the highest percentage of votes for None Of The Above (NOTA) in Mumbai at 2.66%, accounting for 3,884 votes. This assembly segment has 269,069 registered voters and saw a 54.04% turnout on Wednesday. In fact, the Nationalist Congress Party’s candidate and former minister Nawab Malik’s daughter Sana Shaikh won from this constituency by a margin of 3,378 votes, which is less than the NOTA votes polled here.

NOTA sees a drop: highest in Anushakti Nagar, lowest in Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar

Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar, where Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party came out on top over Ateeque Khan (AIMIM), Suresh Patil (Shiv Sena) and Nawab Malik (NCP), had the lowest percentage of NOTA votes at 0.69% (1,213 votes).

The number of NOTA votes polled in Mumbai nearly halved in this election to 73,475 (1.29%) out of 5,699,681, compared with the 2019 polls, when 142,009 (2.87%) voters out of 4,931,020 decided they didn’t prefer any of the candidates in the fray.

Breaking it down in terms of the Lok Sabha constituency, Mumbai North recorded the highest number of NOTA votes at 14,629, followed by Mumbai North East (12,268), Mumbai North West (11,688), Mumbai South Central (12,813), Mumbai South (10,724) and Mumbai North Central (11,353).

“Usually NOTA is used by educated voters,” said Mrudul Nile, associate professor in political science at the University of Mumbai. “This is basically a symbol of voters not being satisfied with the candidates’ ideologies.” Explaining the reasons behind the decline in the percentage of NOTA votes in the state compared to the 2019 polls, Nile said it was mostly down to the various welfare schemes and freebies announced by the state government to attract voters.

According to the Election Commission of India, if NOTA gets the maximum number of votes, they are considered invalid and the candidate with the second-highest number of votes will be declared the winner. Hence, NOTA does not have any impact in terms of forcing a re-election. There is a petition being heard by the Supreme Court to frame guidelines for such a scenario, including the possibility of nullifying the election to hold fresh polls.

NOTA was first introduced in 2013 during the assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh.