The conduct of election rules 1961: 49 O: Elector not deciding to vote :If an elector after his electoral number has been duly entered in the register of voters Form-17 A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49 L decided not to record his vote , a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17 A, by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.
Gnani says, Vote for ‘O’ in the elections. Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta explains how, from Hindu column, You can decide not to vote.
Idly Vadai Blog has the full scoop on Elections 2006. Also noticed that there is a group blog by tamil bloggers, Therthal 2006 and an election blog in english, Arasiyal Talk.
kirukkal.com 
9 responses to “‘O’ Podu !!”
The last line of the Hindu report hints that people might not have the guts to do this. Interestingly, Indian voters have a right to a secret ballot, therefore, even their voting for ‘neither of these candidates’ should technically be a matter of secrecy. This is not so in the case of the said law. That depends on how you interpret ‘ballot’ in ‘secret ballot’. If only a ‘valid choice’ (‘one’ of the above) is permitted to be secret ballot, then we might need a little tweak in the law.
Or better still include a none-of-the-above button in the machine. It should be the cheaper alternative :p
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If there such an option (“None of the above”), there might be some constituencies where this option would have gathered the max number of votes 🙂 That’s the state of our politicians.
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idlyvadai deos a great job. Neat.
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thanks for the Arasiyal Talk link. The pre-election fever can only be matched by the pre-world cup fever 🙂
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LG,
was discussing this issue today morning with my mother….But I fail to understand what the option “I do not want to vote” will do except register your opinion on the state of the contenders in the constituency. I do not think that there is any provision for the election in that constituency be scrapped if say more than half of the total number (or any other prescribed fraction) of voters excercise this option.
Further this piece of information came as a surprise to me as i have never heard it before. If it has always been so, then this tells a lack of information we have as far as our political system is concerned. I do not remember coming across such a provision in the Civics books in school…and i for one did read it as seriously as possible.
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Checkout this option…http://www.lokparitran.org/
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I understand that Paritrana’s ideology and strategy document have been taken by GMAT and CAT coaching institutes for comprehension exercises….
if any of you have understood those documents, you can post somewhere in simple english…
btw, will anyone tell me what does ‘bantam decision’ mean?
srinivasa sastri
http://saveenglishfrombloggers.blogspot.com
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LG Sir,
Have you checked out this blog..
http://allaboutpolitics.blogspot.com
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Why to discuss. Writer Chella has written a very short article on Tamilnadu Election. That is it! Read that crisp analysis at
http://kanalpakkangal.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/03/03/elections-in-tamil-nadu.html
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