Gujarat: NOTA votes ranked third in 24 of 25 seats in Lok Sabha election

Of the 25 constituencies in the Gujarat Lok Sabha election, NOTA or None of the Above option emerged as the third-most popular choice for voters in 24 seats in the 2024 election. According to Election Commission data, NOTA garnered 1.56% of total votes polled.

The only constituency where NOTA didn't come in the top 3 was Jamangar, where 11,082 NOTA votes were cast, ranking fourth. The constituency saw 14 candidates contesting this time against the 28 in 2019.

Notably, several BJP stronghold seats like Gandhinagar and Navsari saw a surge of NOTA votes. Gandhinagar seat saw its NOTA voters’ tally increase by over 7,700 votes — from 14,214 in 2019 to around 22,000 in 2024.

In Navsari, NOTA voters increased by over 11,000, from around 9,000 in 2019 to 20,462 this year.

The constituency which saw the maximum NOTA votes polled was the ST reserved seat of Dahod, which was won by the BJP's Jaswantsinh Bhabhor. Nearly 35,000 voted in favour of NOTA, comprising 3.12 % of the total vote share.

Moreover, there has been a significant increase in NOTA votes overall compared to the last Lok Sabha election. From around 4 lakh in 2019, the shar jumbed to 4,60,341 in 2024 . The NOTA vote share too increased by 0.18 percentage points, from 1.38% in 2019 to 1.56% in 2024.