Former president Pranab Mukherjee with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the inaugural event in New Delhi on Friday. (Express photo/Praveen Khanna)
Former President Pranab Mukherjee Friday launched the National Electoral Transformation or NETA mobile application, a platform where voters can review and rate their elected representatives and hold them accountable as well.
“A good democracy cannot function without informed voters, good leaders, accountability and complete transparency,” Mukherjee said at the launch of the mobile app, which is the brainchild of 27-year-old entrepreneur Pratham Mittal.
Inspired by the US’ approval system, the app seeks to let users rate their MLAs and MPs. It is also being viewed as an instrument to gauge voter sentiment across constituencies in the country. To ensure participation, the app requires a combination of mediums like the app itself, IVR calls, SMS and even offline activation leveraging ASHA and anganwadi workers to collate data on evolving political inclinations.
Piloted during the February bypolls in Rajasthan’s Ajmer and Alwar constituencies, the app was later used in Karnataka ahead of the assembly elections in May.
The platform, in its beta version, has already registered over 1.5 crore verified voters rating and reviewing their local leaders across 543 parliamentary constituencies and 4,120 assembly constituencies over the last eight months. It is available on Andriod and iOS and web in 16 languages to cater to a diverse user profile.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was also present at the inaugural event, said that while India is a large democracy, there are people who give their votes based on caste, religion and other perceptions. “There are many who have not even met their representatives… in such an atmosphere I think this initiative will give voters information about candidates and their work. It would help both the party and people,” he said.
(With PTI inputs)