NOTA is not for Rajya Sabha polls: Supreme Court
22nd August, 2018Category: National
The Supreme Court has scrapped the use of ‘None Of The Above’ (NOTA) option in the coming Rajya Sabha elections. A Bench, led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra, held that the NOTA option is meant only for universal adult suffrage and direct elections and not polls held by the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote as done in the Rajya Sabha.
The verdict was in response to a petition filed in 2017 by Gujarat Congress leader Shailesh Manubhai Parmar to do away with the ‘NOTA’ option in Rajya Sabha elections. The petition was filed in connection with the Rajya Sabha election in which Congress leader Ahmed Patel was contesting. He raised the concern that MLAs could defy party whips and invalidate their votes by opting for NOTA.
Read More: The Hindu, The Times of India