49O - The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961

49O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.

Source: http://archive.eci.gov.in/manuals/part5/stat2z_2.htm

First of all when I received an email talking about Section 49O, I just ignored it thinking that it would be a forward spam mail as usual. But when I got the same again and again, I thought of verifying whether Section 49O of The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 provides an option for the voter to caste no vote.

I searched the web for the truth and found a couple of forums discussing the same. I saw some arguments like in the Indian constitution there is no section 49O and the discussion continues. But the above quote is taken from http://eci.gov.in which should be trust worthy. I don’t believe some body will bother to host a web site in the name of Election Commission of India. The same argument is supported in Wikipedia also. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/49-O) So I concluded that there is a section 49O given in “The Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961 which allows casting no vote.

In a country like India where there is a good percentage of candidates compete in election can be corrupted, 49O will be very valuable. Some articles say that if the number of no Vote is more then a re-election should be called. One good thing about this rule is that impersonation of voter identity can be prevented to some extent. The other good thing is that when the choices available for voting is note the one wished by a voter, then he can always cast his protest vote against all the candidates who are nominated.

How many of the citizens of India know about this section still remains as a question. Even if somebody decides to caste no vote, the officials sitting in the polling booth may not be aware of the procedure or even they may not be aware about this situation at all. Many times we may have seen a group of people protesting and doing a non-participation in poll for some reason. It would be a good thing if these collective strength can caste no vote, so that nobody can claim the majority just because he/she got more vote than the main opponent.