The Supreme Court on Tuesday ended the choice of legislators to press none of the above (NOTA) option in the process of electing members to the Rajya Sabha stating that giving such a choice would encourage the “satan” of defection and graft.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud said that the NOTA option was meant for direct elections and not polls held by the system of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote.
“When one analyses the exercise of choice of NOTA in the voting process of the Council of States, where open ballot is permissible and secrecy of voting has no room, and further where the discipline of the political party/parties matters, it is clear that such choice will have a negative impact,” said the bench. It added by saying, that a candidate, after being elected as member of Rajya Sabha becomes a representative of the State and does not represent a particular constituency.
The NOTA option was introduced in RS polls by the Election Commission in its two circulars issued on January 24, 2014 and November 12, 2015. The same was challenged by Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, the Congress chief whip in the Gujarat assembly at the time when the party had fielded sitting MP Ahmed Patel as Rajya Sabha candidate. Parmar challenged the poll panel’s notification on the ground that it would encourage “horse-trading and corruption”.
The bench agreed with this view and said, “We may immediately add that the option of NOTA may serve as an elixir in direct elections, but in respect of the election to the Council of States, which is a different one as discussed above, it would not only undermine the purity of democracy but also serve the Satan of defection and corruption.”
The poll panel had said NOTA was first introduced in 2014 following an apex court verdict a year earlier and the Congress then did not have any objection in subsequent polls as it suited them.