A lot of us were so very happy when the verdict for Right to reject All candidates was passed by the apex bench of the Honorable Supreme Court of India; but the big question is, what does it mean for us the voters???
Basically it gives us a button called NOTA or None of The Above, when we go in to vote, which was previously not there, instead if you wanted to reject all candidates you were supposed to go to the presiding officer of the polling booth and register the same with him in a register, but it was not exercised ever I think as mostly people were unaware of any such option and the ones who knew preferred not to go for Voting at all.
Even now it is not very clear whether the NOTA button would have any relevance or not as the courts have not yet indicated what in the case of more votes falling for NOTA than any other candidate, logically all the candidates should be disqualified and re-election should happen in the particular constituency. As of now it is not clear whether any such thing will happen or not or my the court is also looking forward to what is the kind of response that people will have towards such an option.
The overall situation seems to hanging in balance and say if a situation comes up where there is a case of NOTA getting the highest number of votes may the courts will have to intervene. For the time being we should be happy to have such an option.
This might actually be a reason for a lot of people who have always thought of skipping the voting process as none of the candidates are worth a vote. Hopefully it will result in higher voter turnouts at least for the first set of elections when the option is made live by the election commission.
Basically it gives us a button called NOTA or None of The Above, when we go in to vote, which was previously not there, instead if you wanted to reject all candidates you were supposed to go to the presiding officer of the polling booth and register the same with him in a register, but it was not exercised ever I think as mostly people were unaware of any such option and the ones who knew preferred not to go for Voting at all.
Even now it is not very clear whether the NOTA button would have any relevance or not as the courts have not yet indicated what in the case of more votes falling for NOTA than any other candidate, logically all the candidates should be disqualified and re-election should happen in the particular constituency. As of now it is not clear whether any such thing will happen or not or my the court is also looking forward to what is the kind of response that people will have towards such an option.
The overall situation seems to hanging in balance and say if a situation comes up where there is a case of NOTA getting the highest number of votes may the courts will have to intervene. For the time being we should be happy to have such an option.
This might actually be a reason for a lot of people who have always thought of skipping the voting process as none of the candidates are worth a vote. Hopefully it will result in higher voter turnouts at least for the first set of elections when the option is made live by the election commission.