A month before the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election were to be announced—and while polling was still under way—the 18th Lok Sabha got its first member. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate from Surat, Gujarat, was declared elected unopposed after all other contenders withdrew or had their nominations rejected. Over 16.5 lakh voters in the constituency were thus denied the chance to cast their vote.
A petition currently before the Supreme Court has challenged the legality of declaring unopposed candidates as winners without a single vote being cast. The main argument being that the voters do not get a chance to exercise the choice of “None of the Above” (NOTA).
The deliberations in the court have widened the scope of the debate. They now touch upon the very relevance of NOTA—whether it holds any real value, especially in uncontested elections where voters have no choice at all, or whether its limited uptake so far reflects its ineffectiveness as a democratic instrument.
A two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices Surya Kant and N. Kotiswar Singh, when it last heard the case on April 24, 2025, added another dimension to the debate by seeking the Centre’s response to the court’s suggestion that a candidate be declared a winner in such elections only if he or she gets a certain minimum percentage of votes.
In the Lok Sabha elections conducted from 1951 to 2024, as many as 35 candidates have won through uncontested elections. This phenomenon is more common in State elections. In the 2024 Arunachal Pradesh Assembly election, 10 of the 60 seats were filled without a vote being cast, as the candidates were elected unopposed Previously, even in the 2014 Arunachal Pradesh Assembly election, 11 seats were declared without polling. Amongst the States, Nagaland has had the most number of MLAs elected unopposed at 77, followed by Jammu and Kashmir at 63, and Arunachal Pradesh at 40.
The Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, an independent think-tank involved in legal research, filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on August 20, 2024, arguing that declaring a candidate elected unopposed without polling is unconstitutional and discriminatory because the electorate does not get a chance to exercise the option of NOTA.
The petition wanted the court to appropriately read down or strike down Section 53(2) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which deals with uncontested elections, arguing that it is unconstitutional. It also sought that Rule 11 read with Forms 21 and 21B of the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, be struck down as they are equally “unconstitutional”.
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Under Section 53(2), if the number of candidates is less than the number of seats to be filled, the Returning Officer shall forthwith declare all such candidates as elected. As per Rule 11 under the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, where the number of contesting candidates is equal to or less than the number of seats to be filled, the Returning Officer shall immediately declare the result of the election. Forms 21 and 21B are filled up by the Returning Officer to declare the result of uncontested general elections and byelections, respectively.
According to the petition, the current practice of declaring uncontested elections violates voters’ fundamental right, since the Supreme Court had in its judgment in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) vs Union of India (2013) ruled that the right to cast a negative vote by opting for NOTA is protected in direct elections under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. The Supreme Court had said in the judgment that a positive “right not to vote” is a part of expression of a voter in a parliamentary democracy and it has to be recognised and given effect to in the same manner as “right to vote”.
The petition also challenges Section 53(2) of the Representation of the People Act under Article 14 of the Constitution for failing the test of reasonable classification since it creates two distinct classes of voters, one in constituencies with more than one candidate and others with only one, and while both the classes of voters have the same set of fundamental rights, one is denied its “right not to vote”.
Polling officials walk to their respective polling booths, a day before the voting in the third phase of Lok Sabha election in Belagavi, Karnataka, on May 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit:
ARUN YALLURKAR/PTI
As per the petition, the legal provision in question violates Article 14 also because it fails the test of manifest arbitrariness. The Supreme Court has held that a statutory provision as well as a piece of delegated legislation violate Article 14 if they are manifestly “arbitrary”—or in other words, if they are unfair, unreasonable, and not in pursuit of equitable treatment.
The petition cited some uncontested elections as case studies in an effort to drive home the point that NOTA is all the more important in such scenarios because if the other candidates have been coerced into withdrawing from the contest, voters can express their displeasure about it by opting for NOTA.
In Surat, for example, only Mukesh Dalal, the BJP nominee, was left in the fray after the nomination papers filed by the Congress candidate and the party’s back-up candidate were rejected. On the final day, a total of eight candidates, mostly independents, as well as the candidate belonging to the Bahujan Samaj Party, withdrew their nominations. The Congress alleged foul play in the rejection of its candidate’s nomination papers.
Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya, senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, said, “Legally, we cannot say one way or the other whether there was coercion or undue influence on the rival candidates. But the very possibility of coercion or undue influence in an uncontested election is actually a solid ground for the option of NOTA to be made available to the voters.”
“Let us say that in an uncontested election, there is a feeling that nominations of rival candidates have been rejected unfairly or that they were forced to withdraw from the fray. The voters can express their displeasure against such a practice by pressing the NOTA button,” he said.
In its response to the petition, the Election Commission (EC) defended the current practice of declaring uncontested elections, arguing that the NOTA option applies only when voters physically cast their votes—a situation that does not arise under the existing legal framework governing uncontested seats.
“In the PUCL matter, the court had held that the NOTA button shall be provided in the ballot papers/EVMs which will be utilised by the people who decide not to vote for any of the candidates in the fray. Hence, the NOTA option can be exercised when the polling takes place, where the voters come to the polling booths to cast their votes,” the EC said in an affidavit before the court.
According to the EC, treating NOTA as a mandatorily contesting candidate in uncontested elections does not find place in the statute and it would require legislative amendments in the provisions of the Representation of the People Act and Conduct of Election Rules.
It also pointed out that the chance of an election being uncontested has become a rarity, as data show. It said that NOTA has turned out to be a “failed idea” and hence it was unreasonable to seek election in the rare situation of there being only one candidate in the fray.
“NOTA never impacted any election as a miniscule [number] of voters exercised their option. Every winning candidate got far higher votes than NOTA,” senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the EC, told the top court during the hearing on April 24, 2025.
The other problem with NOTA is that it does not have any electoral value. Even if more people opted for NOTA than the votes secured by any of the candidates, the candidate with the maximum votes would be declared the winner.
Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi said, “NOTA only has a notional value. It only goes so far as conveying the voters’ sentiments. It is effectively a non-vote or a blank or invalid vote. It does not alter the result.”
Bhattacharya, however, states that NOTA could be strengthened, as has been done in certain local body elections. In November 2018, the Maharashtra State Election Commission announced that in the local body elections, if NOTA got more votes than the candidates, a re-election would be held. Soon after, the State Election Commission in Haryana announced that in the municipal election, NOTA would be treated as a fictional candidate, and a re-election would be held if NOTA got a majority of votes.
Former Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy suggested that if NOTA polls more votes than the difference between the winning candidate and the runner-up, a re-election should be held. “The voice of the voters in such a situation clearly conveys dissatisfaction with the candidates, and it is a fit case for a re-election to be held,” said Krishnamurthy.
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In many countries, negative voting has been given legal recognition and it has a bearing on the electoral outcome. Following the Supreme Court’s PUCL order in 2013, India became the 14th country to introduce NOTA in its elections.
According to journalist and academic Vipul Mudgal, while it is clear that NOTA has not worked as was originally envisaged, the answer lies in strengthening it and not doing away with it. “The idea behind seeking NOTA was that let us first have NOTA and then strive for a better NOTA. A change in law would be required for that to happen. And I do not think that the political parties can be expected to do it and sign their death sentence. A solution can come only from the court,” he said.
A solution proposed by the court is ensuring that candidates in uncontested elections are declared winners only if they get a certain minimum percentage of votes. This would have ramifications for the first-past-the-post system of declaring winners in India’s elections.
“The first-past-the-post system is outdated. I am of the view that a candidate should be declared a winner only when he or she has got at least 35 per cent of the votes polled or one-third of the total votes polled,” Krishnamurthy said.
The petition could indeed have multiple ramifications, from the way uncontested elections are declared to the importance of NOTA to the problems with the first-past-the-post system of declaring winners.
Source:https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/analysisuncontested-elections-voter-rights-india-2025/article69620973.ece