: The Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the Election Commission (EC) to file its proposed action-taken report on a plea to popularise the ‘none of the above’ (NOTA) option provided on the electronic voting machine (EVM).

The First Bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Satish K.Agnihotri and Justice M.M. Sundresh also directed the EC to file its response in a week’s time on a public interest litigation filed by S.Sathiachandran, advocate.

The petitioner also sought to direct the EC to take appropriate steps and measures to design a symbol to represent ‘NOTA’

In the PIL, Mr.Sathiachandran said, “In the EVMs, while all the candidates are allotted symbols representing their candidature, the provision just adding a NOTA button in the EVMs will only be doing lip service to the invaluable right of the voter to reject the candidates fielded.

In such circumstances, the invaluable right of the voters as expounded by the Apex Court gets obliterated in the absence of effective measures to ensure the exercise of the voters’ right.”

The petitioner added that the candidates seek their election by spending huge sums of money to impress upon the voters to cast votes in their favour

The “NOTA” has no canvassing at all, as the new right of dissent is yet to be made aware of.