1.29 crore people pressed NOTA in 5 years: Most votes were received in Bihar; UP on top in 2022 assembly elections

NOTA has got about 1.29 crore votes in the last 5 years in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. Election rights body ADR has given this information. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) have taken this data on the basis of elections held during 2018-2022.

According to the report, NOTA has got about 64 lakh 53 thousand 652 votes in the assembly elections. At the same time, overall NOTA has got 65 lakh 23 thousand 975 votes. In the Lok Sabha elections, NOTA got the maximum 51,660 votes in the Gopalganj constituency of Bihar, while the lowest 100 votes were polled in Lakshadweep.

In the assembly elections in the year 2020, NOTA got 7 lakh 49 thousand 360 votes in two states. Of these, 7 lakh 06h thousand 252 votes were obtained in Bihar and 43,108 votes in Delhi. In the year 2022, in the assembly elections of 5 states, NOTA got the least 8 lakh 15 thousand 430 votes.
In the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly Elections, NOTA got the highest 7,42,134 votes and Mizoram got the lowest 2,917 votes in the 2018 Assembly elections. NOTA secured the highest vote share i.e. 1.98% in the 2018 assembly elections held in Chhattisgarh. At the same time, it secured the lowest vote share i.e. 0.46% in both Delhi State Assembly Elections 2020 and Mizoram State Assembly Elections 2018.
The ADR said that if candidates with three or more criminal records are in the fray in any area, then there is more use for NOTA. In the 2018 assembly elections, NOTA got 26,77,616 votes. The maximum number of votes polled is 6,11,122 in Bihar's 217 red alert constituencies.

The ADR says that if the votes cast for NOTA in a constituency are more than all the contesting candidates, then no candidate should be declared elected and fresh elections should be held. In this, no previous candidate should be allowed to contest the election.