The Congress had appealed to the voters in Indore to press the NOTA on the EVMs to teach the BJP 'a lesson' after its candidate withdrew his nomination and joined the saffron party.

The Indore Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh has set a new record with the highest ever number of NOTA votes polled at 218674, as per the Election Commission of India (ECI) data on Tuesday. ‘NOTA’ option or ‘None of the Above’ is an option available on the voting machine—Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), which allows voters to formally express their rejection of all running candidates. It was introduced during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

BJP has won the seat with its candidate Shankar Lalwani getting over 1226751 votes, as per ECI data. All the 13 other candidates in Indore have so far received less votes than NOTA.

Earlier, the Congress candidate from Indore, Akshay Kanti Bamb, had withdrawn his name during nominations and subsequently joined the BJP.

The Congress then appealed to the voters in Indore to press the NOTA on the EVMs to teach the BJP "a lesson". The Congress has been out of poll race in Indore for the first time in this Lok Sabha seat's 72-year history.

Following a decision of the Supreme Court, the NOTA option was introduced on the EVMs in September 2013.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu recorded 46,559 votes for NOTA, which was then around 5 per cent of the total votes polled in the constituency.

Voting in Indore took place on May 13, with 61.75 per cent of the 25.27 lakh electors exercising their franchise, as per the EC'a data.

NOTA option:

To be clear, NOTA option does not have any electoral value. Even if it gets the highest number of votes, the candidate getting the most of the remaining votes is declared the winner.

As per the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) report, the highest number of NOTA votes in Lok Sabha elections stood at 51,660 in Gopalganj (SC) constituency in Bihar till afternoon.