NEW DELHI - The alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is projected to win a majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, an exit poll summary said.
The summary of two exit polls by the news channel NDTV projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win more than 350 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority.
The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 election.
The opposition “India” alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was projected to win more than 120 seats.
The seven-phase vote, in which nearly a billion people were eligible to cast their ballots, began on April 19 and ended on Saturday with polling in the last 57 seats — including in Modi’s constituency in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.
More than 100 million people were registered to vote across eight states and federal territories on Saturday, including in the northern state of Punjab and the eastern states of Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha.
Exit polls have a patchy record in India as they have often got election outcomes wrong, with analysts saying it is a challenge to get them right in the large and diverse country.
The opposition has dismissed exit polls, and ahead of their publication had called them “prefixed”.
Several other TV channels were due to project their exit poll numbers later on Saturday.
The Election Commission will count the votes on Tuesday and results are expected the same day.
A victory for Modi, 73, will make him only the second prime minister after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to win three consecutive terms.
Modi began his re-election campaign by focusing on his achievements over the last 10 years but soon switched to mostly targeting the Congress by accusing it of favouring India’s minority Muslims, which the opposition party denies.
Pre-poll surveys said the BJP would easily keep its majority in the election. But the party ran into a spirited campaign by the “India” alliance, sowing some doubt about how close the race might be.
The opposition has largely campaigned on affirmative action programmes and saving the constitution from what they call Modi’s dictatorial rule, an allegation the BJP denies.
Scorching summer temperatures with unusually severe heat waves, have compounded voter fatigue, with at least 33 people killed by suspected heatstroke, including nearly two dozen election officials. Temperatures reached 48 degrees Celsius in many voting areas on Saturday.
Unemployment and inflation are the main concerns for voters in the majority-Hindu country of 1.4 billion people, surveys have said.
