As 2019 Haryana assembly elections are poised to have a tighter finish between the incumbent BJP and the Congress, there is another close battle taking place along the sidelines in which Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is fighting against the NOTA (‘None of the Above’) option and even trailing against it.
According to the ECI website data, the voters of Haryana have preferred to vote for NOTA or ‘None Of The Above’ rather than voting for parties like Aam Aadmi Party and the Communists.
The ECI data suggests that the NOTA option has garnered more votes with a vote-share of 0.55% while Aam Aadmi party are yet 0.45% of the total votes counted. The two Communist parties – CPI and CPI(M) are currently at 0.03% and 0.09% of votes only.
The Aam Aadmi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal had fielded its candidates on 46 seats in the 90-member Assembly. The Aam Aadmi Party had made promises such as Rs 1 crore to the next of kin of armed forces personnel killed in the line of duty. They had promised to provide 200 units of power for free of cost, besides 20,000 litres free water for each family.
However, it seems that voters of the Haryana are unimpressed with the promises that were made by Kejriwal’s party and has preferred NOTA rather than voting for AAP.
Read: 2018 Assembly Elections: NOTA outperforms AAP and the Communists in all the states they contested
Interestingly, the Aam Aadmi Pary and NOTA have an interesting relationship. Even in 2018, ‘None Of The Above’ had trumped the Arvind Kejriwal-led party as NOTA was given more preference in assembly elections.
The NOTA vote share oscillated between 2.0% in Chhatisgarh and 0.5% in Mizoram, and rest three states got an average of 1.2% NOTA votes. In Chhattisgarh, AAP had got 0.9% of total votes. In Madhya Pradesh too, AAP lost all candidates and failed to outnumber NOTA votes. The AAP got 0.7% of total votes while NOTA received 1.4%.
Even in Rajasthan AAP got 0.4%, while NOTA registered 1.1% of total votes.