New Delhi: Election Commission and Center told Supreme Court on Thursday that SC’s 2013 mandate Notta A “unsuccessful idea” had come out for voters and that for a pilot to know that she protects more votes in the note, to know that a rare example of a pole had to emphasize to conduct elections even in the rare example of a pole.
Looking at the EC, Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi told SC, “NOTA … never affected any election as a minuscule of voters used this option. Every winning candidate got more votes than NOTA.”
Attorney General R Venkatarmani, along with Additional Solicitor General SD Sanjay, the government said that the EC has agreed.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh said, “Can union government and EC candidates consult setting the minimum vote percentage benchmark to win?”
‘Unopposed election is now rare’
The government may think of setting up an expert body involving MPs and domain experts to discuss this issue. Since our constitution provides for democracy by majority, is it not desirable that the winning candy-date secures a threshold vote percentage, which will be decided by Parliament, “the bench said.
Venkatarmani said that the issue was deliberately made by the EC, which gave a report on the ‘One Nation One Poll’. He said that the recommendations were debated by the MPs and there were views of deviation.
Justice Kant said that this could be a fictional issue – a single candidate in the field could secure less votes than NOTA, when an election was chosen unopposed instead of declaring an election.
In its affidavit, EC said that a candidate to be unopposed from a Lok Sabha constituency was very rare. Since 1991, there was only one example of a candidate who was elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha, Dwivedi said. “Since 1971 till date, it has been in the last 54 years, six have been done Unopposed election overall. Since 1951, in 20 general elections, only nine unopposed elections have been held, “he said.
The NGO ‘Vidhi Center for Legal Policy’ responding to PIL, demanding the election to be conducted, whenever there was only one candidate, EC said, “With the development of democracy, more number of political parties are contesting elections and hence, the number of candidates also increases automatically, and voters have become more aware and have become more eager for their rights.
“The possibility of the election being unopposed has become a rareness that is proved by statistical data and therefore, in such a scenario, SC should not entertain the current petition.”
The NOTA option is only when an election is held, the EC said, “Therefore, the note does not get a place in the law as a compulsory candidate in all direct uncontested elections and the same will require legislative amendments in the provisions of representation of the People’s Act, 1951, and the rules of the election will require legislative amendments, and conducting the rules of the election, 1961.”
