Himachal votes 2022: NOTA 'appeal' up, will matter in keenly fought seats

Pratibha Chauhan

Shimla, November 7

With several Assembly constituencies in Himachal Pradesh witnessing a tight multi-cornered contest, mainly due to the presence of rebel candidates, the liberal use of NOTA (none of the above) may prove decisive and sway the outcome any which way. The NOTA factor is being considered significant as in the 2017 state elections, it polled more votes than the winning candidate’s victory margin in four constituencies.

In Kinnaur, Congress candidate Jagat Singh Negi had defeated BJP’s Tejwant Singh Negi with a margin of 120 votes even as 249 people pressed NOTA. In Hamirpur’s Barsar, Congress nominee Inder Dutt Lakhanpal beat Baldev Sharma of the BJP by 439 votes while NOTA polled 464. In Kasauli, Rajiv Saizal’s (BJP) victory margin of 442 votes against Vinod Sultanpuri (Congress) was lesser than the NOTA score of 503. The same script was repeated in Dalhousie where Congress leader Asha Kumari defeated BJP’s DS Thakur by 556 votes even as NOTA polled 569. In Solan, Dhani Ram Shandil of the Congress had defeated BJP’s Rajesh Kashyap by 671 votes while NOTA scored 656.

The victory margin in 17 segments stood below 2,000 in 2017. This time too it is being expected that more than a dozen seats could end up in a photo-finish. A few seats like Kasauli (Solan), Dalhousie (Chamba) and Kinnaur have had slender winning margins in the past.

The winning margin during the Mandi Lok Sabha bypoll in 2021 stood at 7,490 whereas NOTA polled 12,626. This only indicates that had the voters cast their vote any other way, the poll outcome would have been different. The highest 1,959 NOTA votes were polled in Nachan and 1,647 in Balh, both seats in Mandi district. Pratibha Singh, Congress candidate and wife of former Chief Minister late Virbhadra Singh, had won the byelection, necessitated after the demise of BJP MP Ram Swaroop. She had defeated BJP’s Brig Kushal Thakur (retd), a Kargil war hero.

In 2017, 34,232 people had opted for NOTA, the highest 1,162 being in Jogindernagar (Mandi) and 1,010 in Shahpur (Kangra). In the 2014 Lok Sabha poll, 29,155 persons pressed NOTA, a count that rose to 33,008 in the 2019 parliamentary polls.

“A growing number of voters going in for NOTA is a reflection on poor choice of candidates by parties. It also shows that for some voters, a candidate’s image matters more than the party,” says Ramesh Chauhan, political science professor at the HP University in Shimla.