Who have you worked for?
Nobody, politically. Mandate is a new practice and this is the first month it exists, so there is no client list and we are not going to invent one. What we do have is the parent firm's four years of building software and websites for organisations, and a method you can check line by line on the first document we send you. That is why the first baseline is on approval — it is the only honest way for a new practice to ask for a hearing.
Are you aligned with a party?
No, and we intend to stay that way. We will work for candidates and organisations across the spectrum, subject to the refusals listed above. We take one client per constituency per election so nobody is ever paying us while we work for the person opposite them.
How can you charge a fraction of what the consultancies charge?
Because we are not selling the same thing. Their price is twenty salaries sitting in your constituency for eight months. We are a desk that reads published records, so the cost of one more constituency for us is research time, not another twenty people. That also tells you the honest limit of what we do: if your problem needs a thousand workers moved on polling day, we are the wrong firm and will say so.
Do you use AI?
Yes, heavily, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. It reads and cross-checks large volumes of published record far faster than a person can, and it drafts and translates. A person checks every figure against its source and every line of language before anything leaves us. Anything synthetic that goes out in public is labelled and logged, which the ECI advisory of 24 October 2025 and the IT Amendment Rules in force since 20 February 2026 now require in any case.
Can you get me the voter list for my ward?
No. We do not handle electoral rolls at all, in any form, for anybody. If a firm offers to sell you a voter database with phone numbers attached, that is the offer you should worry about most.
Will this count against my expenditure limit?
If you are a candidate and the work is done during the campaign period, yes — it is an election expense like any other service you buy, and we will give you a clean invoice for your return. For context, the current ceiling is ₹95 lakh for a Lok Sabha seat in the larger states and ₹40 lakh for an assembly seat, so a baseline is a small fraction of it. Work commissioned between elections is not election expenditure. We are not your lawyers and you should confirm this with whoever files your return.
Do you place advertising?
Not during an election. Political advertising on television, radio, e-papers, bulk messaging and social media has to be pre-certified by the Commission's media committee before it runs, and that is a job for a team already inside your campaign. We will write the material and tell you what needs certifying; the placing is yours.
We are not a candidate. Can you still help?
Yes, and that is a growing part of what we do. Associations, companies, hospitals, universities, unions and non-profits all deal with government and mostly do it without a research function. The public affairs desk is built for exactly that, it is invoiced normally with GST, and none of the election rules on this page apply to it.
Do you work outside India?
For organisations, yes — research, consultation responses and policy work travel perfectly well. For foreign parties and candidates we are being deliberately careful, because the rules on political money crossing borders are strict in both directions and we would rather turn down the work than get that wrong.
What happens to what we send you?
It stays between us. We do not publish client work, we do not use your material as an example without written permission, and we do not keep personal data about anybody's voters because we never take any in the first place.