Mumbai-based media and technology company Niti Digital on Wednesday announced the launch of IndiaVotes.com, India's largest public elections resource.
The website covers all Lok Sabha elections since 1952 and all state elections since 1977. Most of the website's data was sourced from the public domain and then processed to make it useful for analysis.
The main aim behind allowing public access to this data is to encourage data-driven decision making in the political domain. Internet users can find election data online but are unable to locate the information easily and also find trouble in consuming the data in structured formats necessary for analysis. This is where IndiaVotes steps in to become the open-source equivalent of election information in India.
VeerChand Bothra, CEO of Niti Digital, said, "IndiaVotes is an outcome of our own desire for accessible data on Indian elections. It was conceived because the world's largest democracy deserves a participative democratic platform for electoral information."
Founded by serial technology entrepreneur Rajesh Jain, Niti is an acronym for new initiatives to transform India. The company has teams working in the digital media space (NitiCentral.com), on elections (IndiaVotes.com) and in creating collaborative technology platforms for community organising.
Rajesh Jain, MD of Niti Digital, said, "The combination of digital media, big data and communications technology will help shape decision making in future Indian elections. Niti Digital wants to be at the intersection of these streams. By making Indian election data easily accessible to all, IndiaVotes is an important step in this direction."
The website already has over 200 national as well as state elections data sets that will be further enriched with inputs from users. Voters will soon be able to add information on issues affecting their constituency.
