Almost equal vote share for Owaisi and NOTA

GAYA: Statistics can be more than numbers, say experts – sometimes even “funny”. This sentiment appears to capture the voting pattern in Bihar where Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and NOTA secured nearly identical vote shares in the just concluded assembly elections.According to figures released on the Election Commission’s official website, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen polled 1.85% of votes while NOTA received 1.81%. The narrow gap has stirred curiosity in political circles.

For lawyer-activist Ashok Kumar, the parity between AIMIM and NOTA reflects more than statistics. He argued that voters pressing the AIMIM symbol and those opting for NOTA “did so for almost the same reasons”. Both categories, he said, expressed their disenchantment with mainstream political parties.Several other parties, including CPI, CPI(M), Mayawati’s BSP and Sharad Pawar’s NCP, received fewer votes than NOTA. Ali Hussain, principal of a Gaya-based college who has been teaching political science for nearly two decades, said the decline of these traditional parties deserves closer study. He added that after the exit of Tariq Anwar, NCP lost its relevance in Bihar politics while CPI, CPI(M) and BSP have long maintained a presence in the state, making their poor performance particularly striking.CPI’s decline stands out even more because the party was once a major force in Bihar politics. It won 35 seats in the 1972 assembly elections in undivided Bihar.