to vote or not to vote

hello election officer, how are you?

please check my identity, take my signature and stamp my hand.

I am here to not vote!

I came to know recently that the Indian constitution allows any individual the right to 'officially' not vote any candidate. This is given in section 49-O if the conduct of election rules, 1961. Now, the question that arises is: if you have decided not to vote any candidate then why should you spend all the time and energy to go to the polling booth, especially when there are innumerable things of international importance that you can do, like TV, cricket, movies, browsing internet, and chatting!

I think it is about taking part in the democratic process, whose success depends on the number of people that are involved. It is important to make the contestants know that they cannot be elected just becoz a better choice is not available.

According to some believers ... in a ward, if a candidate wins, say by 123 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes more than 123, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision on them.