Google officially launches its election portal in India

The US-based search engine major Thursday launched its election portal which also provides information on political parties.

"Election portal will serve as a one-stop destination to help voters get answers to their elections and voting-related queries to make an informed decision," Google said in official blog.

In the first phase of the launch, the portal will cover news information and videos related to state elections in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram covering news from leading publications and broadcasters both in English and Hindi.

Users will also be able to watch content hosted by YouTube partners on elections and links to Hangouts done by political representatives in the recent past.

Earlier this month, social networking site Facebook joined hands with the Association for Democratic Reforms to help the voters access election candidates' criminal, financial, educational, professional information directly on their mobile via Facebook using USSD technology.

Facebook launched 'Register to Vote' feature, which seeks to promote its users to exercise their voting rights.

The feature encourages users to add on his/her Facebook timeline as a life event that the person has registered to vote and share this story with other connected users.

With over 200 million Internet users in the country, the Internet audience in India has reached a critical scale and it will play an important role in influencing decisions of a large proportion of the urban Indian population in the upcoming elections, Google said.

"Elections related search queries on Google have shown a considerable increase and the interest in news information related to elections and politics have started to peak," Google India Head of Public Policy and Government Relations Chetan Krishnaswamy said.

Leading political parties are active on most social media platforms, and users will be able to access all information sent out by the political parties on platforms like YouTube, Google+ and connect directly with the candidates in their constituency, he added.