Google rolls out “Know your candidates” Tool for Elections 2014

VARINDIA- INDIA'S FRONTLINE IT MAGAZINE

Google has announced the launch of a new tool as part of its elections portal offering “google.co.in/elections”, called “Know Your Candidates”. The new tool will allow citizens to get easy access to the relevant information about political candidates contesting from their constituency and their incumbent Member of Parliament. This tool integrates publicly available information sourced from Indian organizations such as the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), PRS Legislative Research and Liberty Institute India.

Commenting on the launch, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google India, said, “In the last five months, we have made a concerted effort to provide our users a one-stop destination for all their information needs for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. With the launch of this tool, we have added all the important information of the contesting candidates with the help of groups such as ADR and PRS Legislative Research who have been doing a stellar job of collating all the important information about the candidates. We hope that making this information easily accessible will help Indian voters learn more about the candidates running for public office and help them to make an informed decision.”

Prof. Trilochan Sastry, a founding member of ADR, applauded this launch saying, “We are delighted to collaborate with Google to launch this tool, which will help our concerted effort to disseminate to the citizens of India the background information of the candidates contesting theLok Sabha 2014 elections that will enable them to make an informed choice during voting. As citizens, we have to play a proactive role in ensuring that we choose politicians who are clean, honest and committed to the progress, security and development of the people of India, and we, at ADR, have been working on deeper reforms including political party reforms and in the last few years have obtained several landmark judgments from the Supreme Court and Central Information Commission.”…..See more