Number of smartphone apps for voters to make informed choice

NEW DELHI: A range of smartphone applications has been launched to help voters in making an informed choice this elections.
The applications feed users with statistics, profiles and allegations against the candidates on their phones.

'India Elections' by engineering students Rohit Singh and Sweta Suman, 'Indian Elections 2014' by DVDroid, 'India Elections 2014' by Jaydip Gohil, 'iCitizen-India Elections' by ProjectX Apps are some of the mobile applications helping a user get information about the elections free of cost.

The information about constituency, schedule, profile of candidates, trivia, results of past elections are available on the touch of one's phone through these applications which can be downloaded from the application market.

Election Commission has also launched an application which helps users check whether their name are in the electoral roll of the constituency and also find out the polling station.

This application can downloaded by Android users from "apps.mgov.gov.in".

A third-year engineering student at Heritage Institute Of Technology, Kolkata, Rohit Singh says he came up with the application 'India Elections' as he wants to send good people in Parliament.

He and his friend Sweta Suman use credible data from Election Commission website and modify it in a mobile application format which is user friendly manner and could be used over phones and tablets.

"We started developing 'India Elections' application in August, 2013 and released the first version. This will help people to chose good candidates. We have to know our politicians," Singh told PTI.

These application can also help the citizens turn into vigilante by reporting malpractices adapted by candidates through using their smartphones to capture photographs and videos of such incidents.

Advocacy group for good electoral practices, Association of Democratic Reforms has released its application 'Election Watch Reporter' through which a citizen can send videos, pictures and complaints of malpractices during an election which will be forwarded to the Election Commission.

"Citizens can use this app to send complaints which include pictures and location to us which we will forward to the officials of Election Commission of India and relevant election observers etc," Lakshmi Sriram, Senior Program Associate from ADR said.

Once a user posts a picture with details, the application, launched by Election Commissioner H S Brahma, will automatically pick up exact location on Google Map to help the election observers locate the spot.

"It's great a app... now everybody have power to work for nation...," one of the users of the app Sunny Mitra posted in his review.

'India Election 2014', developed by Jaydipsinh Gohil, gives profiles of six most famous politicians for Prime Ministerial candidates-- Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Arvind Kejriwal, Sushma Swaraj and Mulayam Singh Yadav-- which get updated with new developments.

If you are not a serious election enthusiast and willing to have fun at the expense of candidates there are some games which could lighten you amid loaded debates dominating news channels.

Applications such as 'Bhaag Modi Bhaag' by GamingAdda will allow one to help Narendra Modi clear obstacles albeit in virtual world as he runs towards Delhi while 'Modi Wins' allows user to tap randomly popping up election symbols and manage score of 272 for him.

In one such light hearted game 'Verdict 2014', one can pick up his favourite candidate and make him race across different states of India using balloons and rockets which add to the power. The user has to keep avoiding hurdles by jumping over them or crouching under them.

The popularity of election-related mobile applications is catching up among the users who are now demanding the developers to include additional features to make them more user friendly and provide new insights on the elections.

"Good app Pls include "key contests" section for example... Modi v/s Kejriwal in Varanasi, Sibbal v/s Harshvardhan v/s Ashutosh in Delhi, Nilekani v/s Ananth Kumar in South Bangalore etc (sic)," Yogesh Ranade, user of Indian Elections 2014 developed by DVDROID, said in his review.