Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alliance raced to a majority in the general election in early vote counting trends on Tuesday, but the numbers appeared well short of the landslide predicted in exit polls.
India began counting more than 640 million votes on Tuesday in the world’s biggest election, which was widely expected to return Prime Minister Modi to a third term after a decade in power.
Exit polls on June 1 had projected Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would register a big victory, with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seen getting a two-thirds majority and more.
By 7am on Tuesday in the UK, TV channels showed the NDA was ahead in nearly 300 of the 543 elective seats in parliament, where 272 is a simple majority, in early counting.
But the opposition INDIA alliance, led by Rahul Gandhi's centrist Congress party, was performing better than expected and leading in more than 220 seats.
TV channels showed BJP accounted for nearly 250 of the seats in which the NDA was leading, short of a majority on its own, compared to the 303 it won in 2019.
A third Modi term with a slim majority for BJP - or having to depend on NDA allies for a majority - could introduce some uncertainty into governance as Mr Modi has ruled with an authoritative hold over the government in the last decade.
However, politicians and analysts said it was too early to get a firm idea of the voting trends since a majority of ballots were yet to be counted.
The early see-saw trends spooked markets with stocks falling steeply, while the rupee also fell sharply against the dollar.
The markets had soared on Monday after exit polls on June 1 projected a landslide win for Mr Modi.
"It's a fair assessment to say 400 at the moment certainly looks distant," BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli told the India Today TV channel early on Tuesday, referring to some projections that gave 400 seats to the NDA.
"But we need to wait...to have a final picture of the seats because the exit polls speak of a massive sweep, (and) the counting trends currently don't seem to match that," he said.
"The BJP-NDA will form the government, that trend is very clear from the start," he added.
Exit polls have often got election outcomes wrong in India. Nearly one billion people were registered to vote, of which 642 million turned out.
However, if Modi's victory is confirmed even by a slim margin, his BJP will have triumphed in a vitriolic campaign in which parties accused each other of religious bias and of posing a threat to sections of the population.
The Indian votes were being counted as election fever swept other major nations.
On Monday, Mexico elected its first-ever female president as Claudia Sheinbaum enjoyed a landslide victory.
In the UK, Labour remains well ahead in the polls as British voters prepare to cast their ballots on July 4.
In the US, newly convicted former president Donald Trump and incumbent Joe Biden are on the campaign trail as they prepare to go head-to-head on November 5.
