India starts counting 600 million votes, Modi looks at second term

India began counting hundreds of millions of votes in its general election on Thursday, with a coalition led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party already preparing to form the next government.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is expected to surpass the 272 seats needed to command a majority in the Lok Sabha, six of seven exit polls showed on Sunday.

Their predicted margin of victory is larger than surveys indicated in the run-up to the vote, when most polls showed the NDA would be the largest alliance but would fall short of an overall majority.

Counting of the more than 600 million votes began at 8 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) and trends were expected to be known by noon. Final results are due by Thursday evening.

Modi was under pressure when he began campaigning, losing three state elections in December amid rising anger over farm prices and unemployment.

However, campaigning shifted towards India’s relationship with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan after a suicide car bomb killed 40 Indian police in the contested Kashmir region in February, to the benefit of the right-wing BJP, analysts said.

“National security became the discussion,” said Harsh Pant, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank in New Delhi. “It allowed the BJP to shirk some issues where it was weak.”

The BJP has also capitalised on the star power of Modi, a frenetic campaigner, as well as superior financial resources.

It outspent the main opposition Congress Party by six times on Facebook and Google advertising, data showed, and by as much as 20 times overall, sources told Reuters earlier this month.

(REUTERS)