: None Of The Above (NOTA). The NOTA option, provided to voters to express their dissatisfaction at the candidates contesting an election but something that political parties appear not to care about, was exercised by 1,04,244 voters in Telangana and a whopping 3,91,855 voters in Andhra Pradesh. Voters in Araku ST constituency in Andhra Pradesh, who polled the highest NOTA votes – 50,470 - in the two Telugu states, almost reached the 2019 highest NOTA votes record set in Gopalganj in Bihar, which saw an astounding 51,660 voters exercise this option.
However, the NOTA count in Araku paled in comparison to the 2,18,674 voters using the option in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. Incidentally, the NOTA votes in Araku was marginally higher than the majority of 50,580 votes registered by YSRCP candidate Gumma Thanuja Rani over her nearest TDP rival Kothapalli Geetha. In Telangana, it was Malkajgiri which saw the highest NOTA count at 13,366, followed by Adilabad with 11,762 voters indicating that they were not willing to vote for anyone in the fray.
The least number of NOTA votes were polled in Hyderabad where the AIMIM won an emphatic victory. Interestingly, in Telangana, the total NOTA votes in the eight seats that the BJP won stood at 55,585, while in the eight seats the Congress won, the number stood at 45,753 votes. In Andhra Pradesh, in the 15 Lok Sabha seats which the Telugu Desam Party won, the total NOTA votes polled were 2,09,328, while in the four seats won by YSRCP, it stood a.