The fact that most exit polls fail to ascertain election results is an indicator of how difficult and gargantuan the task of estimating election outcome is. But Pratham Mittal says that through his app, Neta, he predicted Karnataka's hung assembly beforehand. How, you wonder? Mittal has created an app that lets you 'review' your neta or politician. He says he received 2.5 million votes on the Neta app for the Karnataka election despite being operational only in Karnataka, Ajmer and Alwar.
Don't fret, these votes are not official and it will not form a government. What it will do is act as a watchdog for politicians. Users can rate politicians and will reveal what users from a particular area think of their politicians. Mittal believes that if Zomato and Yelp ratings can keep a check on a restaurant's performance, why can't the same be done for politicians.
According to a report in Business Insider, the votes are displayed in the style of a leaderboard. If users are particularly fond of a politician, he or she will be ranked on top. Neta app users can also change their votes if they feel that the politician is performing way below mark or if they have really pulled up their socks and made a change.
Users can also have discussions and polls related to issues in their area on a different section in the app. This not only allows more feedback but also an insight into ground reality.
The team behind the app has drawn up a database of constituencies across the country and the politicians who are competing from those areas. Once a new user signs up, he or she will have to feed in their pin code to find their respective constituency and then vote for a neta.
The fact that this has a great chance of misuse by parties with a strong IT cell is not lost on Mittal and his team. As a preventive measure, the app asks for a user's phone number which it then verifies with telecom operators' data to find the user's name and then tallies it with voter databases to find the user's constituency.
Additionally there's Aadhaar as well. Users can also feed in their Aadhaar number and the app then verifies the user against UIDAI APIs.
However, Mittal also concedes that there is a 4% error margin.
Neta app already has 1,00,000 downloads on Play Store. Furthermore Mittal plans to release the app across the country. He eventually plans to sell the analysis collected on the app to political parties. Mittal also plans to sell the data to media houses and competing against firms like CVoter.