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.
The election has been seen as a referendum on Modi, whose economic reforms haven't broadly succeeded but whose popularity as a social underdog in India's highly stratified society has endured. Half a dozen exit polls showed Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party winning another five-year term.
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," Harsh Pant, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi, told Reuters. "It allowed the BJP to shirk some issues where it was weak."
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."
"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.
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