by Ankhi Das, Public Policy Director – India & South Asia

The country goes to vote to elect the 16th Lok Sabha (House of the People) in a few months. National Elections are always the biggest moment for social mobilization, civic engagement in a democracy. In 2009, the popular vote of the BJP was 78 million and that of the Congress party was 119 million.

There were hardly any people using facebook at that time in India. That has now changed. Today, we have over 93 million people in India engaging actively every month on Facebook. We have always been focused on making sure that we give people the power to share, and to make the world more open and connected.

This and the opportunity to engage actively and regularly with constituents have led campaign teams and leaders to use the medium, making facebook a core part of the political infrastructure in the country. An independent 2013 study by IRIS Knowledge Foundation found that 150 constituencies in the country would be impacted by the facebook vote.

Social engagement is at the core of our platform. In politics and elections, it is also key to influencing voting behaviors and organizing opinion. In this election season, we are bringing facebook Talks Live with key 2014 national and regional leaders.

This is a multi-platform, multi-screen effort in partnership with newslaundry.com and NDTV. In this FacebookTalksLive season, you can ask Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav how they will govern India and what are their priorities and agendas.

We will be opening up questions for candidates at https://www.facebook.com/FacebookIndia on February 20, 2014. Eminent journalist and Editor –in Chief of newslaundry.com, Madhu Trehan will ask your questions on FBtalkslive which will be telecast LIVE on India’s leading news channel NDTV and livestreamed on https://talks.facebooklive.com/.