Hyderabad: Former All India Services (AIS) officers and Forum for Good Governance have urged the Telangana State Election Commission (SEC) to declare NOTA as a “fictitious candidate” in local body elections. They said unanimous elections will not be allowed as already practiced in Haryana. Usually in villages, the ruling party candidate enforces unanimous elections in local body elections through force and intimidation. FGG chairman Padmanabha Reddy said, “NOTA is a voting option designed to allow voters to show their opposition to all candidates in the voting system. It is a democratic means of expressing voter resentment instead of boycotting the polls altogether. NOTA was introduced in 2013 following the directions of the Supreme Court. The introduction of NOTA in the electoral system was to give nod to candidates with clean records to political parties and improve voter turnout.” The votes polled through NOTA in various state assembly and parliamentary elections since 2013 ranged from 1.5% to 2% of the total votes polled. In the current system, there is no provision for re-polling in case NOTA gets the highest votes. In Gujarat (Surat Assembly constituency), the rejection of nomination of the main opposition candidate followed by withdrawal of other independent candidates facilitated unanimous elections. In these circumstances, it was felt that if NOTA had been treated as a fictitious election candidate, a unanimous election could have been prevented. In this connection, a case was filed in the Supreme Court to treat NOTA as a fictitious election candidate. The court has issued notices to the Election Commission and the Union Government,” he added. In Telangana, local body elections are scheduled and are likely to begin within the next two to three months. In the village council elections held in 2019, village head posts in many villages were auctioned by the Village Development Committee and the highest bidder won unopposed as there were no other candidates. “This obnoxious practice makes it easy for the rich to participate in auctions and win unopposed. Moreover, people, especially the weaker sections, are deprived of the opportunity to participate and vote in elections, which is guaranteed by the Constitution. In 2019, 16% of village heads in Telangana were elected unopposed, most of them through auctions. In view of various orders of the Supreme Court, many SECs have empowered NOTA. In Haryana, NOTA are treated as fictitious election candidates, which means there is no unanimous election and they have to vote. This way, the poor also have a say in the election outcome. Reddy said if a NOTA gets more votes than other candidates, re-elections will be held and all candidates who had contested earlier will be barred from participating in the re-polling. V Nagrireddy, a former IAS officer and former state election commissioner, said since many SECs have issued orders empowering NOTA, the Telangana SEC should also issue similar orders.
