Can NOTA make a difference?

Rajesh Kumar

Lahaul-Spiti tribals’ warning to political parties to exercising NOTA or boycotting coming elections, as reported in the newspapers, in case their long-pending demands were not included in their election manifestoes, came as a bolt from the blue. 

Nothing short of a silver lining in dark clouds, a righteous awakening, long overdue, seems to have dawned upon the electorate, vis-à-vis using NOTA as a potent tool of negotiation at a most pertinent hour, when elections are round the corner. Their genuine concerns nonetheless, the big question, however, is — will exercising NOTA help achieve their objective? 

Skepticism runs high given the fact that NOTA, in its current format, is a toothless tiger that may mean no harm to the hegemony political parties otherwise have in electoral arena, where politicians are, irrefutably, the invincible lords of the game and voters mere stooges pirouetting to their tunes in full abidance.

NOTA when introduced in September 2013 seemingly provided a vent to a voter’s pent-up feelings against scandalous political machinations that played havoc with the health and well-being of democracy in our country. But despite it being in force for quite some time now, political landscape hasn’t changed for the better simply because NOTA is just an option on the ballot with no practical relevance.  It is not a foolproof mechanism, which may bar criminals from entering electoral arena. Nor has it been able to rein in errant political parties, which in their blind pursuit of power often took nation to ransom, blatantly hijacked elections by fielding wrongful candidates in the fray and made mockery of democratic institutions by cocking a snook at them. We still have criminals abound in political elite, who are ruling the roost with élan in our state legislatures and parliament.

Ignominy of a NOTA voter

In terms of electoral stature, a NOTA voter stands on the same podium as does a ‘willful absentee’ as both share a commonality of being inconsequential in determining election results. The only difference being, former may take a hollow pride of at least participating in a most pious democratic exercise, which suffrage is, while the latter unceremoniously ends up earning notoriety for not becoming a part of it at all through absenteeism.

But despite standing for hours together outside a polling booth under direct sun, what does a NOTA voter derive out of the painstaking exercise? His participatory spiritedness is rewarded only with opprobrium and a foregone conclusion in his favour that at the end of the day, his vote is going to be counted, but would remain bereft of any ‘say’ in determining the fate of the candidates in fray, whereas that of a ‘Non-NOTA voter’, even if cast in favour of a candidate with criminal antecedents, highly esteemed.

Though he dares to defy imposition of a wrongful candidate on him by an insolent polity, his legitimate defiance is never taken due cognizance of. Nor is his opinion, howsoever sagacious it may be, given any weightage, lent any credence or accorded any relevance in terms of worthiness in influencing election outcomes. This is his irony, which has not yet been empathised with by our electoral system.

Why NOTA registers low vote share

Since few exercise the option, NOTA never commands any significant vote share. Construing it as indicative of its being ‘less significant’ will, however, be a wrongful interpretation, as abysmally low NOTA vote share reflects the number of only those, who exercise it not necessarily the opinion of millions on the other side of the fence who, though, wanted to use it, as a medium of protest, but didn’t owing to its being presently insignificant in determining election fate and thus stayed away from voting at all.

There are many more, who moved by the spirit of participation in a democratic process as their righteous obligation towards the Constitution, which it definitely is, end up casting their vote in favour of one candidate or other, mindlessly, at the eleventh hour, lest their franchise should go waste. Such an ‘undecided’ lot of voters is doing more damage to the sanctity of elections through their impromptu and injudicious decisions and proving to be far more pernicious to the health of democracy than ‘willful absentees’, who having stayed away from voting altogether, are a rather much wiser lot, contrastingly, for at least they are not contributing towards the election of criminals, who never deserve to be our representatives.

This has been a big consolation and a sure sign of voter wisdom, which, ought to prevail over an alternate option of choosing the ‘lesser evil’ for our democracy, has arrived at a juncture, where a voter can’t be deemed as ‘helpless’ anymore, a weak NOTA notwithstanding. Nor does he have the dearth of other viable options to work on to be assertively expressive of his notion and viewpoint. The right to make judicious choices to protecting the very tenets of democracy, which have always lent credence to the sanctity of electioneering processes in our hard built Republic, is something still very much within a voter’s domain.

Lend teeth to the ‘toothless tiger’

• Making NOTA implicitly relevant by taking votes cast in its favour into ‘formal count’ on a par with ‘Non-NOTA votes’ in determining election results thus becomes imperative at the juncture. The exercise may see an overall surge in voter participation – out of their own volition – and an exponential rise in NOTA count as such, negating in the process needed for mandatory voting on part of electorate, as is being mooted, of late, in political circles.
• NOTA vote count, if deducted from total votes cast in a given election, will be a step towards making it adequately relevant in determining election outcomes. If the net vote percentage so arrived falls below a pre-determined and qualifying ‘baseline’, the given election could be declared ‘null and void’ with the onus of election fiasco fixed outright on contesting political parties – the real culprits. An indemnity if exacted from them may help recover costs incurred on a given election to some extent.
• No political party in the fray would ever want that such an unsavoury situation should ever arise and are most likely to make a last-ditch effort by urging voters not to opt for NOTA under any circumstances, for it will have a direct bearing on the ‘validity’ of the given election. Voters may oblige only if provided with untainted candidates with clean image and sound credentials in the fray. Perhaps this is what the object of whole exercise is all about.