NOTA votes rise by 8,300 in Delhi municipal elections over 2017

Over 8,000 more people went for the None Of The Above (NOTA) in the recently concluded Delhi municipal corporation election than in 2017, according to data released by the state election commission (SEC) in Delhi on Wednesday.

The state election commission said 57,545 votes, or 0.78% of the 7335,825 votes polled in the December 4 municipal election. were for NOTA.

This is 8,310 more than the 49,235 votes which were for NOTA in 2017. The NOTA vote share in the 2017 municipal election was 0.69% of the 71,36,863 votes polled.

In the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, NOTA got only 43,108 votes, or about 0,5% of the votes polled.

The state election commission data also indicates that at a city level, NOTA received more votes than many smaller political parties such as the Nationalist Congress Party, Janata Dal (United) or All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).

To be sure, these parties only fielded candidates from a limited number of seats while NOTA votes were polled across 250 municipal wards.

The NCP received a total of 14,890 votes (vote share of 0.20%), AIMIM received 45,628 votes (0.68%) and Janata Dal (United) received 11,480 votes (0.16%).

Back in 2017 when the election was held for the three municipal corporations, the largest portion of NOTA votes (19,762, or 0.74% of votes polled) were cast in North Delhi Municipal Corporation election. In South Delhi civic body, the corresponding NOTA figure was 19,190 or 0.71% of the votes polled while in East Delhi Municipal Corporation, it was 10,283 (0.58%).