The highly anticipated day of vote counting has finally arrived, and the excitement among the people has reached its peak. Although most of the electorate came out to vote for their favored party, there is one constituency in these elections where the vote share of NOTA surpassed most peoples expectations.
The Indore Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh witnessed a record number of NOTA votes, exceeding one lakh by noon on Tuesday. Akshay Kanti Bamb, the Congress candidate from Indore, withdrew his nomination on the final day for withdrawals. Following this, Bamb joined the BJP. Consequently, BJP candidate and incumbent Lok Sabha Member Shankar Lalwani essentially won by default.
Since then, the Congress has been encouraging voters to utilize the NOTA (None Of The Above) option to the fullest. After approximately six rounds of counting today, the NOTA votes in Indore had surpassed the one lakh mark, setting a national record for NOTA in Lok Sabha polls.
Following a decision of the Supreme Court, the NOTA option was introduced on the Electronic Voting Machines (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.
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