A new citizen-driven election monitoring platform allows citizens to report irregularities in the Lok Sabha Elections. Called VoteReport, it allows citizens to send reports via SMS to a pre-designated number -- 5676785, emails to report@votereport.in, or online at www.votereport.in

Users contribute direct SMS, email, and web reports on violations of the Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct. The platform will then aggregate these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

The information will also be made available via email, and RSS feed, and SMS, so that concerned parties can track the irregularities in the election process easily.

The votereport.in platform is powered by two non-profit open-source projects Ushahidi and SwiftRiver and managed by eMoksha.

Ushahidi is an award-winning platform that crowd-sources citizen reporting. SwiftRiver is a platform that makes sense of multiple sources of information in a fast-changing crisis situation. eMoksha is a non-profit organization that aims to enable stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and engagement.

As India s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives, in the month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, and allegations of violence, intimidation and other irregularities during the elections.