Once this data is obtained by hook or by crook, voters are then slammed with messages customised to their financial status, professions and personality, without them volunteering.

Data harvesting to manipulate voters appears to be far more brazen at home than the lone case of UK-based Cambridge Analytica mining Facebook profiles of Americans for the 2016 Trump campaign, an India Today investigation has found.

This month, New Delhi issued a May 10 deadline to both the companies for a comprehensive response on breaches involving Indians.

Facebook has been struggling with its worst crisis since allegations surfaced Cambridge Analytica gleaned information of as many as 87 million people on the social media platform.

But that could just be the tip of the iceberg, given less-regulated environment in developing countries like India, home to 1.25 billion people, almost half of them now hooked to the Internet.

India Today's undercover investigation unearthed a number of home-grown political consultancies playing fast and loose with citizen data they scrape from various sources, let alone Facebook or Twitter.

The probe found them secretly culling voter profiles on behalf of political parties for targeted messaging during election campaigns.

Manish, founder of New Delhi-based Janadhar, an election management company, offered a trove of data scooped from retail chains, job portals, shopping apps, banks and telecom and DTH firms for unleashing a psychological warfare on voters.

"So we start from survey, strategy, execution and delivery. All put together, we do everything," he told India Today's reporter posing as an agent of a political party participating in Karnataka elections scheduled for May.

"Delivery means what? Can that convert into votes?" the journalist asked.

"Yes, if by that you mean a return on investment so far as your campaign is concerned," Manish replied. "Overall, we'll deliver everything to you from both offline and online sources. We'll also provide you information about the market and voter conversations regarding you."

Overall, we'll deliver everything to you from both offline and online sources. We'll also provide you information about the market and voter conversations regarding you.

He now explained how that information could then be exploited for targeted electioneering --- much the same way as the Donald Trump campaign is believed to have used Analytica's data in 2016.

"We'll let you know what's the buying behaviour, whether you (the voters) are shopaholic, which credit card they use," Manish insisted. "Cambridge Analytica is all about this only. You get an SMS on your card. That SMS is delivered on (mobile phones). So I have everything for you."

Before India Today's reporter met him again, Manish had secured email data of two lakh people from the South Bengaluru constituency.

As a sample, he also sent ten Excel sheets of citizen information containing their names, addresses, PAN, Aadhaar, mobile, SIM and even economic details.

"If anyone is in job and if their CV is put up on a job portal, then you'll get whatever you want," he revealed.

If anyone has a credit card, I'll get that data. If anyone has a loyalty membership of a lifestyle (service), I'll get that data. I'll get the data wherever it's given. - Manish, founder of New Delhi-based Janadhar

Once this data is obtained by hook or by crook, voters are then slammed with messages customised to their financial status, professions and personality, without them volunteering.

"It's a 360-degree bombardment. When you wake up, you get a flier in the newspaper. You reach office, you see our (campaign) email. When you open your Facebook, you see a photo (advertisement). So what's being done here. It's to surround the voter from all sides," he continued.

"Repeating one thing over and over again. It's 'vote for me' if you want migrant welfare. This has to be penetrated deep into his mind. It's just like rote learning."

But the bill for this goldmine is extraordinarily high. Manish demanded around Rs 1.20 crore for data from one constituency in Bengaluru.

The information would be good value for money, he claimed.

"I am telling you it's (it will result in) an increase of 50 percent (in vote share)," said Manish.

Another consultancy, Pollstar, also promised a rich treasure of voter profiles from both on- and offline platforms.

Its founder, Manish Tiwari, confessed that his teams had swiped mobile data from around every cell tower in Bengaluru South in connivance with unscrupulous telecom officials.

"There are 4.5 lakh phone numbers active on towers in this constituency. Out of which, 1.5 lakh are WhatsApp users," he said. "This data shows the numbers that are linked to these towers at night in your constituency."

Manish's conventional tactics appeared equally deceitful. He would send his staff out as imposters to collect voter information from residential neighbourhoods.

"Our teams will reach out to up to 25,000 houses to collect the data. They would go there to raise awareness about voting, to appeal to people to come out and vote," he disclosed. "We will run this drive in the name of an NGO. We'll collect basic information about their phone numbers, family members there and then. If we target that data, we can influence a minimum of 5-6 percent (of the vote)."

Vivek Banka, director of the Delhi-based Maverick Digital company, boasted of executing multiple marketing campaigns for various stakeholders, including political clients.

There's no issue in sending out targeted messages to voters in the rival camp. Our message will reach out to them as well.

"For example, if the Congress wants that all its digital content becomes visible to the BJP supporters, they will get it 100 percent," he said.

Banka, who offered to track people's sentiments during elections, elaborated on the tools he'd deploy for such sneaky surveillance.

"We have to delve deep down. For us to mine this (voter) reaction strategically, we'll have to develop a customised tool, a device," he said.

"What's that?" asked the reporter.

"That's basically a sentiment-analysis tracker. What voters, people are talking, positive negative or neutral. This is divided into those three segments. We'll be able to access that. We'll have to design a customised tool for this. We'll get it outsourced," Banka explained.

He now quoted the price for the tool.

"It should cost you anywhere between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 4 lakh. It will have an unlimited capacity. The price can be less or more. Our requirement will be first identified. The tool is then customised. I know other (political) parties are also using it," he said.

His colleague and the company's creative head, Omm Dev Sharma, fleshed out the working of such snooping apps.

"Paid-for tools are used, with keywords embedded in them. Who's working for which party -- the BJP, Congress, the BSP, the SP. What people from rival parties are discussing, what is on agenda, which hashtag they are using. Is it positive or negative? What's the feedback there? We analyse everything and prepare our own feedback," Sharma said.

All that information would be tracked automatically and shared with the clients, he added.

Tarun Jain, the business head of Mumbai's Krono Digital marketing company, admitted to buying Facebook data from unknown vendors and selling it to political customers.

"You just tell me the pincodes of either Delhi or Karnataka. I'll show you sample data of any location you want. This data is already with me. We buy it every day. We cannot work without it," he said. "I conduct 40 services a day, which includes SMSes, WhatsApp and emails. How can I do it without data?"

On being asked if such political election management companies should be banned, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya told India Today, "Yes, I hope Election Commission takes note of it and takes appropriate action. We don't want to undermine our democratic process".

"It is scary for us, as a political party, because we don't want anyone else to resort to such unfair means and try and bend the voter one way or the other. In the recent past, the Congress party has been called out for its alliance with Cambridge Analytica."

Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, in a counter-attack to Amit Malviya's allegations, said, "A COBRA post expose that happened in 2014 that told the world how BJP was actually abusing social media by buying out people who became the troll army, the BJP IT cell is known for producing fake videos, morphed images and indulging in fake news."

He also reiterated that such political election management should be banned in India. "India has a right to privacy, unfortunately PM Modi's government argued against it."'

Jha also brought in the Facebook angle, he said that no action was being taken against Facebook. "Facebook is at the linchpin of this entire issue".

Cyber security expert Pavan Duggal spoke about how India has no laws on data protection and cyber security. "It is a flourishing market and it is so because the vacuum is existing. All kinds of stakeholders require these kinds of services. They know India is a fertile ground, there is no data protection law in the country. The Information Technology Act, 2000, does not even come closer to the expectations of people. India does not have cyber security law."

WATCH | India Today investigation reveals political agencies stealing voters' data