Don’t Like Poll Candidates? Supreme Court Says You Can Reject Them All

Finally, here is more power to people to make India the best democracy of the world. And it is endorsed by none other than the apex court of the country. In a landmark initiative today, the Supreme Court of India has directed the Election Commission (EC) to come up with a button on the electronic voting machines that will empower a voter to reject all candidates contesting an election from a constituency. Simply put, voters get a “none of the above” button on the EVM and just need to press it if they feel none of the candidates deserves to be elected.

The order has been passed by a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, P Sathasivam, as the apex court upheld the argument of the petitioner, an NGO called the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). According to PUCL, ‘negative voting’ is a powerful tool to weed out corrupt, undesirable or non-performing candidates and voters should have the right to record their disapproval of all such candidates. The petition was supported by the EC, but in the face of government disapproval, matters duly moved to the apex court and it took 9 years to reach this landmark decision today.

“Negative voting will lead to systemic change in polls and political parties will be forced to project clean candidates. If the right to vote is a statutory right, then the right to reject candidate is a fundamental right of speech and expression under the Constitution,” the court said.

Interestingly, ‘negative or disapproval voting’ is already there in several other countries in some form or other. In Europe, nations like Switzerland, Spain, France and Belgium have a blank vote option and you don’t have to stamp your vote in favour of any candidate. The so-called ‘protest votes’ are counted as well – so that people’s voice may gain the utmost importance when it comes to good governance.

Even in India, you already have a similar option to exercise. Right now, if a voter goes to a polling booth and does not want to vote for any candidate, he/she can sign a register and leave without voting. However, it violates one’s right to secret ballot and that is precisely why the EVM option has been pushed.

But how soon will it be implemented? Hopefully, in a couple of months, and voters in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram could be exercising the all-new ‘reject’ option when these states go to polls in November this year.

However, there is still no provision to ‘count’ the negative votes and that can definitely take the edge out of the SC order. Most of the Indian activists are of the opinion that there should be a re-poll in case negative voting amounts to 50% or more. That surely sounds like ‘sound sense’ but it also demands that the Indian electorate needs to vote even more responsibly than before. Only then we will be entitled to the ‘purity and vibrancy’ in elections we are looking forward to, and good governance will rule the nation.