NEW DELHI: The ‘None of the Above’ (NOTA) option was exercised by a large number of voters in the DUSU elections held this year, evidently to indicate their disdain for the power of muscle and money.
Of 53,452 students who voted on Friday, over 16,000 students voted for NOTA, which proved to be a game changer for both NSUI and ABVP which witnessed tough competition amid the counting rounds on Saturday.
Surprisingly, NOTA was much ahead in numbers compared to the votes secured by the left parties including the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the All India Students Association (AISA).
In the AISA panel, the vice presidential candidate secured 3,492 votes while NOTA got 3,914 votes; the secretary’s post got 3,612 votes while NOTA got 5,108 votes; and the joint secretary post got 4,195 votes, while the NOTA got 4,786 votes.
The post of secretary for which six candidates were in the fray got a maximum number of NOTA votes followed by the joint secretary’s post.
Similarly, in SFI’s panel, the presidential candidate got only 1,838 votes as compared to 2,757 votes for NOTA; the vice president’s candidate got 2,906 votes as compared to 3,914 votes for NOTA and the joint secretary got 3,311 votes while NOTA got 4,786 votes.
Law faculty-student Sulochana Mehta said, “The blatant display of money and power made us go for the NOTA option. We wanted to question who is the genuine leader among all? How do we get to know the leader in 15 days when he comes and shows us his face? We know him through the banners put up across the campus. Otherwise, there is a connection between that leader and a common student.”
Another student who had voted on Friday, Rashmi Sehgal, said, “We had an option of staying back home also but we didn’t because we wanted to utilize our rights.
It was not mandatory to vote for any particular leader. This is a world of democracy and NOTA is something through which we can openly say that we don’t believe in student parties and their temporary leaders.”
Interestingly, when this newspaper posed certain questions to the presidential candidates ahead of the election, ABVP leader Tushar Dedha was clueless about even the full form of NOTA.