New Delhi: The Supreme Court, on Tuesday set aside the Election Commission’s notification allowing NOTA option in the ballot papers for the Rajya Sabha polls and said that None of the Above Option (NOTA) can be used only for direct elections and cannot be a ballot option in the Rajya Saha polls.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud questioned the poll panel’s notification and said that NOTA was meant to be exercised by individual voters in direct polls.
The order comes after a petition was filed by Gujarat Congress leader Shailesh Manubhai Parmar claiming that the practice gave room to horse trading and cross-voting.
“The system of NOTA makes the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote nugatory… and cannot be made applicable in Rajya Sabha elections. The use of NOTA cannot be sanctioned by way of the impugned circular which has the effect of overriding the provisions of Article 80(4), the provisions of The Representation of the People Act 1951 and the Conduct of Election Rules 1961,” Parmar submitted before the court. During the last Rajya Sabha polls, Parmar was the Congress chief whip of the Gujarat Assembly.
NOTA was introduced in India following the 2013 Supreme Court directive in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs Union of India judgment. The NOTA button debuted in the 2013 Assembly elections held in four States — Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and the Union Territory, Delhi. India is the 14th country to institute negative voting.
