When NOTA became a threat for small political parties in RK Nagar

In fact, more people opted for NOTA than for BJP candidate Karu Nagarajan who received 1,417 votes. BJP national leader,Subramanian Swamy tweeted in the morning “a national ruling party gets a quarter of NOTA’s vote. Time for accountability.”

Similar trends regarding NOTA were observed in the 2015 bypoll and 2016-general Assembly elections in RK Nagar constituency. It recorded 2,376 votes during 2015-by election in RK Nagar when the incumbent AIADMK MLA Vetrivel voluntarily resigned, DMK was reluctant to field a candidate and former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa won the election.

Even during the 2016 general Assembly election, 2,865 people in RK Nagar opted for NOTA.

Interestingly, NOTA emerged as a third place in the 2015 by-poll, while it ranked sixth in the 2016 general Assembly election. Moreover, NOTA gathered more votes than Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) candidate G Devi in the 2016 Assembly election, while BJP’s candidate M N Raja managed to float above with 2,928 votes.