With 1,148 votes, NOTA remains strong
NEW DELHI: A total of 1,148 votes were polled against the NOTA (none of the above) option this year in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union (JNUSU) election. The figure is marginally less than last year’s NOTA tally of 1,512.
This year, 128 NOTA votes were polled for the president posts against last year’s tally of 127. For the vice president’s post, the number of NOTA votes dropped significantly from 496 to 288 this year. Meanwhile, for the post of the general secretary, the tally of NOTA slipped by one vote from last year’s figure of 389 to 388. For joint secretary’s position, the drop in NOTA vote was notably high from last year’s 501 votes to 344 votes.
Officials from JNU’S election committee (EC) attributed the drop in NOTA votes largely to two factors — fewer registered voters and a higher voting percentage. “This year the registered number of voters was less than last year. However, the voting percentage was significantly higher. It shows that only interested students have turned up this time around,” said an EC member, who did not wish to be identified.
In the 2017 elections, out of 8,045 registered voters, 58.7% exercised their votes. However, this time, 67.8% of the 7,644 registered voters turned up on Friday.
In terms of school-wise data, highest number of NOTA votes (391) was recorded from Science Schools and Special Centres. However, students at the School of Social Sciences (SSS) polled the lowest number of NOTA votes (187). “SSS is traditionally the most politically active school at the campus. So it is not surprising that lowest NOTA votes came from there. This time three out of the four candidates of the leftunity were from the SSS,” the EC member said.