Apex court rules NOTA applicable for only direct elections, sets aside EC circular allowing option.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court Tuesday ruled that there cannot be a None of the Above (NOTA) option for MLAs voting in the Rajya Sabha elections. A bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra set aside the Election Commission’s (EC) January 2014 circular, allowing the NOTA option, which was challenged during the tightly-contested 2017 Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls.
The bench, also comprising Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud, underlined that the NOTA option should only be exercised in direct elections. The Rajya Sabha elections follow an indirect voting system.
The top court’s judgment came on a plea filed by Shailesh Manubhai Parmar, the Congress’s chief whip in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, whose petition argued that introducing NOTA in the Rajya Sabha polls would create a situation ripe for horse-trading and corruption.
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The Congress had filed the petition when elections to three upper house seats were to take place in Gujarat on August 8 last year. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s political adviser Ahmed Patel was one of the candidates.
The Supreme Court had then questioned the Congress’s motive in filing the petition, pointing out that the first of the EC circulars on NOTA were issued in 2014, but the court had agreed to look into the constitutional validity of the EC circulars.
Cross-party support
The Congress, however, had the support of the ruling BJP in challenging the NOTA option in the Rajya Sabha polls. Both national parties took the stance that since elections to the upper house are indirect in nature, involving an open ballot and a party whip, NOTA should be done away with.
“Without a corresponding amendment in the Act and the rules, any purported administrative action of the EC to introduce NOTA is ex-facie illegal, arbitrary and in fact tainted with malafide,” Parmar had said in his plea.
He further alleged that the EC “has become a tool in the hands of the ruling dispensation to facilitate a violation of the provisions of the Constitution, the Act and the Rules”.
The Centre also supported the Congress stand on the issue. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, whose assistance the Supreme Court had sought, argued that the EC could not sanction the use of NOTA by way of mere circulars, overriding provisions of Article 80(4) in the Constitution.