Indore: Indore on Tuesday rewrote history by registering the highest-ever NOTA votes in the country at 2,18,674, overtaking a record posted by Bihar's Gopalganj in 2019, while BJP candidate Shankar Lalwani won the Lok Sabha polls from the seat in Madhya Pradesh by a staggering margin of 11,75,092 votes.

All 13 candidates in the fray in Indore against Lalwani, who won by a potentially record margin votes, lost their security deposit, indicating they were clearly rejected by the voters.

If a candidate gets fewer than one-sixth of the total valid votes cast in a constituency, his/her security deposit is seized by the EC.

The NOTA (none of the above) option garnered 16.28 per cent of the total vote cast in the Indore Lok Sabha seat.

Sitting MP Lalwani's nearest rival, Lakshman Solanki of the BSP, pocketed 51,659 votes.

Notably, a call to support NOTA was given by the Congress after its candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrew from the poll fray at the last moment, a move that forced the opposition party out of the contest from the prestigious seat.Bam later joined the BJP.

On May 13, of the 25.27 lakh eligible voters in Indore, 61.75 per cent exercised their franchise. Of them, 13,43,294 ballots were found valid. Of it, 16.28 per cent votes went to NOTA.

In 2019, Indore had recorded a 69 per cent turnout with 5,045 voters opting for NOTA.

In the last parliamentary polls, voters in Bihar's Gopalganj created a record with 51,660 of them, or 5 per cent, opting for NOTA, which is placed as the last option on the electronic voting machine.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, NOTA garnered 46,559 votes in Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu by pocketing nearly 5 per cent of votes cast there.

The NOTA option was incorporated into the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) in September 2013 following a Supreme Court verdict.

This choice gave voters the option to reject all candidates in the fray.

The BJP has been winning the Indore seat for the last 35 years.

Excluding Lalwani, the NOTA option prevailed over the remaining 13 candidates.

In all, the defeated candidates managed just 1,16,543 ballots.

In 2019, Lalwani defeated his nearest Congress rival Pankaj Sanghvi by a margin of 5.48 lakh votes.

This time around, the NOTA supported by Congress did not get even half of the votes that his rival party garnered in 2019, Lalwani told PTI.

"This shows the people of Indore have rejected Congress," he added.

Senior Congress leader Shobha Oza said the people of Indore have created a record by casting their votes in favour of NOTA and giving a befitting reply to the BJP which, she claimed, considers itself above democracy and the Constitution.

Former Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat had recently described NOTA as having a "symbolic" impact and said if it gets more than 50 per cent votes in a seat, only then making it legally effective on poll results could be considered.

Rawat had told PTI that if 99 out of 100 votes go in favour of the NOTA option and someone gets one vote, even then the candidate will emerge victorious.

"More than 50 per cent of electors will have to once opt for NOTA in a seat to show the political community that they do not consider candidates with criminal background or other undeserving ones worthy of their votes.

Only after this, pressure on Parliament and the Election Commission will increase and they will have to think about changing laws to make NOTA effective on the election results," he said.