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It was a nail-biting finish, with victory by a narrow-margin, in some constituencies in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls.
Those who won with a narrow margin would probably have thanked NOTA (none of the above) votes. But those who lost narrowly would not have felt the same.
NOTA votes played a crucial role in deciding the fate of candidates in 21 Parliamentary constituencies of 11 States/Union Territories in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
In Andhra Pradesh, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) won 25 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which managed to win three seats, could do so with a victory margin of less than 9,000 votes.
Though the YSRCP lost to TDP candidates by a margin of 4,205 votes in Guntur, 6,653 votes in Srikakulam, and 8,726 votes in Vijayawada, the number of NOTA votes polled stood at 6,006, 2,5545 and 8,911, respectively.
Of the 21 such constituencies in the country, the TDP won three, the Congress four and the BJP won seven.
Other parties, such as the YSRCP, Janata Dal (United), All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Bahujan Samajwadi Party, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), and the Trinamool Congress won one each seat. The Tamil Nadu-based VCK registered victory in a single seat.
The VCK defeated the AIADMK by a margin of 3,219 votes in the Chidambaram constituency. However, Chidambaram recorded 15,535 NOTA votes in the polls.
Of the 21 such constituencies in 11 States, NOTA votes decided the fate of candidates in four constituencies each in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal; three constituencies in Uttar Pradesh; two each in Telangana and Odisha; and one each in Andaman and Nicobar, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
A matter of just 181 votes
The lowest victory margin was recorded in Uttar Pradesh’s Machhlishahr constituency. The BJP candidate defeated his BSP rival by a margin of 181 votes. NOTA votes in that constituency stood at 10,830.
However, NOTA votes did not impact States with huge victory margin. In Narendra Modi’s home State, Gujarat, the lowest victory margin was 1.27 lakh and the highest was 6.89 lakh.
The Chota Udaipur constituency of Gujarat recorded the highest number of NOTA votes in the State at 32,868.
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