BJP may lose 70 seats, says new app

Neta app claims BJP is down to 212 seats from its 2014 tally of 282.
Archis Mohan reports.

The Neta app, which was launched by former President Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi on Friday, August 24, will accurately predict election outcomes and will be a game changer in Indian politics.

The developers of the app -- modelled on America's approval ratings system, particularly Gallup -- say it would not only enable voters to rate and review their political representatives to foster greater accountability, but also be an accurate barometer of electorate sentiment.

The app has been collecting data for the past eight months and claims to have had a strike rate of 92.7 per cent, based on 2.5 million responses, in predicting the Karnataka assembly polls in May.

If Neta app's data is any guide, the Bharatiya Janata Party is poised to lose as many as 70 seats if Lok Sabha elections were to be held now, and that is without factoring a Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in Uttar Pradesh.

According to the app, the BJP is down to 212 seats from its 2014 tally of 282, while the Congress is up from 44 seats to 110 seats.

Pratham Mittal, the app's founder, says over 15 million verified voters have already rated or reviewed their local leaders across 543 parliamentary constituencies and 4,120 assembly constituencies in the country.

Mittal, 27, who studied at Dehradun's Doon School and the University of Pennsylvania, finds it troubling that the electorate in India votes on caste and religious lines, rather on issues of development.

"The world's largest democracy deserves a platform where we as voters can rate our politicians and question them," says Mittal.

"Neta aims to do just that. We are looking to have 100 million users on the platform before the 2019 polls."