Last week in an old news paper, I was just glancing. Suddenly, my eyes stuck on the election results. The party which came to the power have successful in getting 34% of the casted votes, the 2nd largest party was successful in getting 30% of the votes and 24% of the votes were begged by the third largest party. In one way, it is inferred that the party which has got highest votes should be declared winner. But if we look at the other side of the story, it is also inferred that the person getting 34% of the votes is rejected by the 66% of the people, it means 66% of the people dislike him/her. Similarly, the second party/person is being disliked by the 70% of the people and the third is being disliked by 76% of the voters. If we go for more in depth analysis, it is found that many numbers of voters, who either do not vote or vote to a candidate who is least disliked by him.
These figures gives some indication to call our election process as not as a election process but a rejection process in the Indian democracy. And the candidate rejected by the least number of voters is declared as the winner and representative of the people. Although he/she is representing about one-third of the total voters. At the same time special mention is required for those voters who do not turns up for the voting and their number is quiet significant. It is almost half of the registered voters. In fact many of them do not vote because they dislike all the candidates. In this situation the number of people disliking the candidate further increases.
In this context, if along with the name of all the candidates, the option ‘none of the above’ is given it is expected to reflect more clear public opinion. There will be many advantages. One is those who are wasting their votes by casting it in favour of a candidate who is least likely to win the election. These people are knowingly doing this because they are not getting any suitable candidate to vote. The ‘None of the above’ button in the EVM is most likely to attract these people. Secondly, those people who do not vote because they dislike all the candidates will most likely to be converted into the voters.
Initially, it is expected that more unexpected things will happen like all the candidates may be rejected. But in the long run, it will bring more transparency and accountability in the system.
Indian constitution has given us right to elect, but this right must be accompanied with the right to reject. If this happens then definitely India will be the biggest democracy of the world in the real sense.
