Vote Report India was featured today in Indian daily The Hindu, in a story on the use of internet and mobile technologies in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.

Here is the full text of the story –

A click away

Sruthi Krishnan and Priscilla Jebaraj

The internet is a mine of information on the polls

You are going to vote but are not sure who the candidates in your constituency are. Or you are not sure where your polling booth is. If you have an internet connection, the answers are just a click away.

VoteIndia (http://voteindia.in), whose motto is ‘Let’s have a meaningful revolution,’ provides information on candidates through emails. Register on the site by providing your email address and loc ate your home on the Google map provided. Once you do this, the site determines your constituency and ward and sends you the relevant information. The site gets this information from the affidavits the candidates file with the Election Commission.

Another site that makes use of Google maps is Vote Report India (http://votereport.in). This monitors news and events related to the elections, aggregates it on an interactive map. For instance, if you want to know where “inflammatory speech” occurred, it would highlight locations such as Kandhamal and Pilibhit.

On Indipepal (http://indipepal.com/politics), you can find the back story of six decades of Indian elections in an accessible graphic format. Whether it’s voter turnout or election expenditure over the years, at the national or State level, or the record of various parties when it comes to women candidates, MPs with criminal records or the extent of participation in Lok Sabha debates, it’s all there. For first-time voters, the site also offers a crash course in Indian political terms and realities.

At http://mibazaar.com/indianpolitics.html, you can find details about the 128 MPs with criminal records, all mapped out on a Google map.

Polling Booth (http://pollingbooth.in) gives you your polling booth information, if you feed it your voter ID details. It is available only for Hyderabad district as of now.