Madhya Pradesh: When NOTA knocked out Agar-Shajapur stalwarts... almost

INDORE: Agar-Malwa and Shajapur districts, two constituencies won by BJP in 2018 election saw number of voters opting for "none of the above" (NOTA) coming close to victory margin of candidates.
The reserved constituency of Agar saw 2160 voters opt for NOTA while BJP’s Manohar Utwal won the election with a margin of 2490 votes in a close fight against Congress's Vipin Wankhede.
In other three constituencies of these districts, over 2,000 voters opted for NOTA on every seat but winning margin was more than 10,000 there, showed EC records. BJP and Congress had bagged two seats each from Agar-Malwa and Shajapur districts while one was won by former Congress leader Vikram Singh Rana, who contested election as independent from Susner. Rana, after winning the election, had joined BJP.
Of these five constituencies, Agar went to by-polls in 2020 after demise of Manohar Utwal and the seat was won by Congress’s Vipin Wankhede who defeated Manohar’s son Manoj with a margin of 1998. Surprisingly, no voter opted for NOTA in this by-poll. As of now, Congress has three seats out of five in these two districts.
NOTA is an option that enables a voter to officially register a vote of rejection for all the contesting candidates. Election Commission had introduced NOTA in 2013 state assembly election following direction from Supreme Court.