Agencies
New Delhi, Dec 18: NOTA, or None of The Above, the option that allows voters to not choose from among the candidates contesting has received a small but significant number of votes in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh as of 3 pm. In Gujarat 1.8 per cent of voters opted for this option and in Himachal Pradesh the figure was 0.9 per cent according the data released by the Election Commission of India. In numerical terms, the number of votes that went to NOTA was 5,32,764 and 3,02,70 in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh respectively.
In Gujarat the figure was higher than the number of votes that went to parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)
The number of votes for NOTA is bound to rise further as counting progresses.