File photo of Nandan Nilekani.
Political greenhorn and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is more searched on Google than Karnataka's political veterans such as Siddaramaiah, BS Yeddyurappa and HD Deve Gowda.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, BJP leader Yeddyurappa and Gowda of JD(S) come nowhere close to showing the same search volumes when compared to Arvind Kejriwal, Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, according to the search trends on search-engine giant, Google Inc, a release issued in Bangalore said.
Nilekani, Congress candidate from Bangalore south for the April 17 Lok Sabha polls, is locked in a tough battle against five-time MP BJP's Ananth Kumar.
It said, interestingly, V Balakrishnan the ex-CFO of Infosys, who is now an AAP candidate, has also not been able to garner the same interest as his former colleague.
"As we move closer towards the 2014 Elections for the 16th Lok Sabha, Google search trends for political leaders in Karnataka over the last 90 days reveals that people from the state are following national political developments more keenly than local events," Google said.
Stating that the search trends reveal that voters from the state have cast aside their interest in regional political leaders temporarily, it said they were increasingly focusing on national leaders.
In fact, when the trends are seen from a 365-day perspective, it shows a gradual rise in visibility for Kejriwal, Modi and Gandhi, it added.
Pointing out that while Modi has constantly been more searched than either of his two key rivals on the national stage, the release said, Rahul's visibility in search rankings has dipped marginally in comparison to Kejriwal's from around the last quarter of 2013.
Referring to search trends of political parties it said AAP, BJP and Congress are the most searched parties in the state. However, while AAP remains the most searched among national parties since January, search trends for the party have shown a marked decline.
On the other hand, Congress and BJP are consistently being searched and the search results for BJP are seen to be going up, it added.