NOTA more than winning margin in Virudhunagar

Chennai: In the 2024 LS elections in Tamil Nadu, the None Of The Above (NOTA) option surpassed 20,000 votes in two constituencies, while more than 10,000 voters selected NOTA in 23 constituencies.
In Virudhunagar, where DMDK candidate Vijaya Prabhakaran, son of Vijayakanth, lost to Congress candidate Manickam Tagore by a margin of 4,300 votes, about 9,800 voters opted for NOTA.

Ramu Manivannan, a former political sciences professor at the University of Madras, said NOTA is an interesting provisionbut its effect has been limited. People still tend to vote only for candidates put up parties.
“NOTA has to be empowered so that if the majority of the voters choose it, parties will have to renominate and elections conducted again. If that is the case, more voters will choose NOTA and parties might end up fielding candidates whom the people want,” said Manivannan.
In addition to NOTA, independent candidates without party affiliations secured more than 15,000 votes in Tirunelveli, Trichy, and Thanjavur constituencies.
However, experts said that a closer examination of such candidates who have garnered more votes than expected would likely reveal the support of either a political party or caste outfit.
Confirming this, Pottal Sundara Muniswaran from Tirunelveli, who received the highest number of votes among independents in Tamil Nadu, said that he already holds a position in the Tamil Nadu Yadava Mahasabha and contested the elections to combat the alleged discrimination against his community.
Political analyst Sampath Kumar said that while people desire social activists to advocate for crucial issues they do not vote for them when they run in elections.
In Trichy, an independent got nearly 15,000 votes because his symbol, which was ‘biscuit’, resembled that of the winning candidate Durai Vaiko of MDMK, which was ‘matchbox’.