Assam election in 2016 saw almost 2 lakh votes polled for NOTA: ADR report

GUWAHATI: Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Assam Election Watch (AEW) have analyzed the NOTA and margin of victory for all 126 constituencies in the Assam elections in 2016.

Out of 1,69,19,364 votes polled in Assam Assembly in 2016, 1,89,085 (1.12%) were polled for NOTA. More shockingly still, in 9 constituencies, the NOTA vote was greater than the margin of victory.

"The thought behind the report is to create awareness about the fact that at least 1,89,085 voters of Assam have expressed their unhappiness on the political dispensations of the state and have voted against it," said  "It is a whopping 1.12% of the total votes polled in the last election. NOTA is an expression of the self-respect of the voters who expressed that none of the candidates in their constituency are good enough to represent them. Political parties need to be careful and behave well before they are being rejected entirely by the voters."

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The NOTA button instated by the ECI in 2013 gave the voters an option of rejecting all the candidates in their constituency.

Praneswar Basumatary (INC), Mission Ranjan Das (BJP), Binod Gowalla (AGP), Surabhi Rajkonwar (BJP), Sujan Das (IND), Sushanta Borgohain (INC), Chandan Kumar Sarkar (INC), Misbahul Islam Laskar (IND) and Dilip Moran (BJP) were defeated for failing to wining the confidence of the NOTA voters.

It needs mention here that while 3 winners won with a margin of victory of fewer than 500 votes, 2 winners won with more than 50% of the margin of victory.

The 2021 Assam Legislative Assembly election is the 15th quinquennial legislative assembly election scheduled to be held in Assam from March 27 to April 6 in three phases, to elect 126 MLAs to the 15th Assam Legislative Assembly.