INDORE: As the counting of votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections continues to throw up surprising results, the ‘NOTA’ option garnered over 2 lakh votes in the constituency of Indore.
Notably, the Congress candidate from Indore, Akshay Kanti Bam, withdrew his nomination on the last day for withdrawal of nomination and switched over to BJP. Following this, the Congress party urged voters to press the NOTA button in the elections.
The option of NOTA, which stands for ‘None of the Above’ was introduced in 2013, which gives voters the option to not select any of the contesting candidates. According to the Election Commission of India, BJP candidate Shankar Lalwani has won the seat by a huge margin of 10,08,077 votes.
NOTA has got 2,18,674 votes. No other candidate has been able to cross the votes secured by NOTA. The next biggest candidate is Bahujan Samaj Party’s Sanjay Solanki, who secured 51,659 votes. This is the new record for the highest votes secured by NOTA. Meanwhile, the BJP is ahead on all 29 seats of Madhya Pradesh.
Former CM Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath is trailing from Chhindwara, a seat that was considered a bastion of the veteran Congress leader. BJP’s Vivek Bunty Sahu is leading by 1,12,199 votes. Former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is leading the Vidisha seat by a huge margin of 7.96,575 votes. Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia is also leading on the Guna seat by 5,40,929 seats.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) crossed the majority mark in early leads and is ahead on around 300 seats, while the INDIA bloc, defying all predictions is leading on over 230 seats.
Most exit polls predicted a straight term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with quite a few of them projecting a two-thirds majority for the ruling BJP-led NDA. (ANI)