Indore creates a NOTA record, candidate-less Congress’s appeal works

The Congress’s appeal to people to cast their vote for NOTA in Indore, after its candidate pulled out at the last minute and later joined the BJP, appears to have hit home. Midway through counting, NOTA votes in the seat stood at 1.28 lakh votes.

This is the highest-ever NOTA number for any Lok Sabha constituency ever. The NOTA option was introduced for the first time in the general elections in 2014, and the highest before this was 51,660 votes in Bihar’s Gopalganj.

The BJP candidate, however, remains comfortably placed in Indore, with Shankar Lalwani leading by a margin of 5.89 lakh votes.

In 2019, the Congress had got 31% of the votes in Indore, and NOTA 0.31%.

The Congress’s campaign for NOTA votes in Indore included posters, torch rallies and meetings, and social media chats, ahead of May 13 polling. It urged voters to teach the BJP “a lesson”, over its candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrawing at the last minute.

Indore is Madhya Pradesh’s biggest Lok Sabha constituency, with 25.13 lakh voters, and has been won by the BJP consistently since 1989. In 2019, the BJP won by 5.48 lakh votes, and had re-fielded its sitting MP.

Days before the last date of withdrawal of nominations, Bam found himself charged in a 17-year-old attempt to murder case arising out of a land dispute case. On April 29, Madhya Pradesh Cabinet minister and BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya announced that he had joined the party, and withdrawn his nomination from the seat.

The Congress alleged that Bam had come under pressure to withdraw due to the murder charges.

Incidentally, around a week ago, the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court granted anticipatory bail to Bam and his father in the case.

As per court records, the incident dates back to October