The world’s largest democracy is going to conduct its mammoth Lok Sabha elections soon and this is the perfect time to talk a bit about the whole process and in this case, the choices our voting right provides to us. Without delving much into the logistics involved in undertaking elections of such a humongous scale, let’s think about the wide ranging options this election provides to its voters. From the highly stable but very questionable BJP and the truly revolutionary but inherently problematic grand alliance, this season is giving the voters a chance to simply choose something between stability and instability. Though the grand alliance promises to raise a lot of issues, the lack of a proper face hurts them big time in comparison to the hugely popular face of Modi Ji.
But, then we have NOTA or None of the above. Now, this is a choice which really helps the clueless to help them with an option. But the question here is- as the responsibe voters of our country and by having a right as important as the voting right, which gives us the ability to choose our own representative, isn’t going for NOTA a big disservice to whole system of elections? It’s just like rejecting the whole notion of having a representative and choosing nobody as the person who would represent us on the global stage.
There’s a logical reason why a legal right like voting right is only given to a citizen of a country after he/she attains the age of 18. It’s because after a certain age, a person can be considered to be sensible enough to choose his leader or someone he/she believes can actually represent our nation. So, why do we have to really go for NOTA when we are sensible enough to select our leader? Why do we have to reject all the candidates when there’s a huge change that atleast one of them is worthy enough for our vote?
In almost of all of the recent elections including the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the year when this option was introduced, NOTA has consistently turned out to be the 3rd highest voter getter. This is a matter of grave concern as it portrays a trend where people are actually wasting their voting right, because ultimately a vote for the NOTA option is considered to be a nothing thing which is equivalent to not having a voting right and not voting.
With nearly 1.5 million voters being first time voters this elections, it is time to step up and actually take a stance for a candidate of our choice, who we believe can understand the nerve of the nation. And this is always better than being delusional over the political happenings of our country and casting our votes for something which will go into oblivioun.