Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Election Commission to file its response to a plea to frame rules regarding Nota votes getting a majority.
A Division Bench comprising Justices N.Kirubakaran and M.V.Muralidharan issued the directive and posted to first week of July further hearing of a PIL by TranquebarDorai Vasu, an advocate.
In its interim order, the court said, “The Supreme Court in its judgment had directed the ECI to introduce Nota. The very purpose of introducing NOTA is to make a change in the existing scenario of election process. Even if the Nota votes gets majority, the candidate who gets highest votes would be declared as an elected candidate and it does not change the position which was in existence before introduction of Nota. Therefore, the issue needs to be examined in detail. Notice to ECI”.
According to petitioner, based on the judgment of Supreme Court, Nota button was provided in all EVMs. But, there was no provision in the rules regarding the status of such polled Nota votes. Ultimately, the percentage of NOTA votes was not considered for any purpose and the winning candidate with any percentage of votes will be declared as won. That was, if Nota votes get majority, it was not going to affect the winning candidate. Therefore, there was no sanctity to Nota votes.
The ECI should frame rules that if Nota gets majority, election in the particular constituency should be declared null and void and fresh election should be conducted.
The ECI may also frame rules stating that candidates who fought in the earlier round should not be made to contest or they should be debarred from contesting for at least some period of time as can be decided by ECI in the constituency wherein fresh election ordered subsequent to majority of Nota votes. If these suggestions were taken care by ECI, Nota voters will come forward to exercise their right not to vote.
Otherwise, the intention of voters would remain that even if they vote as Nota, nothing was going to get changed and voters will not exercise that right or may not even come to the polling booths to exercise such option.
No useful purpose will be achieved unless some rules are framed if the Nota gets majority. As of now, there was no Rule in the RP Act/Rules in case Nota gets majority, he said.
