India election results: Narendra Modi claims victory as BJP leads across country
Follow how the results unfolded as they came in
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Your support makes all the difference.Hindu nationalist prime minister Narendra Modi has claimed victory in India’s general election.
Mr Modi promised to unite the country as his party was on course to increase its majority.
Official data from the Election Commission showed Mr Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead in 300 of the 542 seats being contested, up from the 282 it won in 2014 and more than the 272 seats needed for a majority in the lower house of parliament.
As counting continued, some senior members of the main opposition Congress party admitted defeat and a post mortem of the grand old party’s poor performance began.
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We had expected a winner to emerge within a few hours of the start of counting today and, sure enough, NDTV is all but calling the result as a second term for Narendra Modi.
It is worth pointing out that these are still just "leads" - it will be many hours yet before results are finalised.
CNN News 18 have now also called the election for the BJP.
Official data from the Election Commission show the BJP on its own is now ahead in 279 seats - more than the 272 seats needed to command a majority in the lower house of parliament - which would give it the first back-to-back majority for a single party since 1984. The main opposition Congress Party is ahead in 52.
BJP leaders are still urging caution but there is an upbeat mood already at the party's main headquarters in Delhi. GVL Narasimha Rao, a BJP spokesman, told Reuters: "It's a huge mandate for positive politics and the policies of Narendra Modi. It's a huge win for India, we are humbled by the magnificence of this victory."
“This victory will embolden the hardline Hindutva elements [of the BJP]” said author and columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni. Hindu-first politics “worked in the election but it won’t work in running a diverse country like India”, he said.
A senior minister has congratulated Narendra Modi and said the party has won the general election.
"Many congratulations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for delivering such a massive victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party," Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Twitter.
"I express my gratitude to the people of the country."
India's Sensex stock market index has jumped 2.3 per cent to an all-time high over 40,000, in response to the news that Mr Modi appears set for a second term.
The post mortem is beginning for the main opposition Congress. The tally of seats in which they and their allies are leading just dropped below 100 for the first time.
"We have lost the battle," a regional leader of the party said shortly before noon.
Amarinder Singh, the chief minister of the northern breadbasket state of Punjab, made the comment to the India Today TV news channel.
We're hearing reports that crowd numbers are growing at the BJP headquarters in Delhi, which will be the centre of the party's celebrations of what now looks to be a convincing victory.
Mr Modi is expected at the party HQ to address workers at 5pm.
One of the most extraordinary stories of this election is the lead in Bhopal for the BJP candidate Pragya Singh Thakur, a Hindu extremist accused over a 2008 bomb attack.
Bhopal is a stronghold for the BJP, and many will have voted for the party regardless of the candidate.
Nonetheless, it raises the prospect of an MP heading to parliament who made headlines just a week ago for calling Mahatma Gandhi's assassin a "patriot".
The BJP is now ahead in 284 seats, more than the 282 it won in 2014 - meaning it is on course to surpass what was at the time seen as a stunning landslide. This is far beyond what almost all pre-election predictions and exit polls suggested.
The NDA, the right wing alliance the BJP leads, was on 339 seats at 12.30pm - also ahead of the 336 it won last time around.
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