SC's negative voting verdict, good or bad for democracy

Recently Supreme Court held that a voter could exercise the option of negative voting and reject all candidates as unworthy of being elected in the elections. The court directed the Election Commission to provide the None Of the Above' button in the EVM so that voters can press this option.

The Supreme Court has taken the decision in order to bring persons with clean image in the elections and also to ensure the secrecy to the voters so that they can vote against all candidates without any fear.

It is mostly seen that those people who are rich and having power only stand in elections. The people have to choose one of them as they don't have choice to reject. It is unfortunate that because of this many unworthy candidate gets elected. NOTA option would indeed compel political parties to nominate good candidates with higher moral and ethical values.

For a successful democracy it is very important that the MLA's or MP's should be honest and well trusted persons in their constituencies. 'None of the above' option in EVMs will force parties to field candidates known for integrity.

This judgment is popularly welcomed by all parties and the voters alike. Now people have right to choose best available candidate and if they don't find any good candidate they can vote against all of candidates and that too in full privacy.

Earlier when there was no NOTA option, people have to choose one from and had to fill if they don't like any of the candidates. This was a tedious process and because of it less number of voters came out for voting.

Now people will come out to vote in large numbers against candidates if they don't like them. So this move will surely help in increasing the voter percentage in elections and help in choosing right the candidates having pure image.

This is very useful provision and helpful for our democracy. However, there are also many difficulties in the path of negative voting. It will take too much time to make people aware of such option.

This NOTA option now will come into use in upcoming elections in five states. Everyone has eyes on these elections but we can't judge effect of this change in these elections. Also the Lok Sabha elections are close, so we will not be able to see the change due to paucity of time.

However this provision will be helpful in a long term when most people are fully aware of this choice. It will surely help cleaning the dirt of politics and bring people with clean image to enter politics.

So the awareness of NOTA option among people is very important. It is really going to be very useful for our democracy.

-Ankush Sharma