NEW DELHI _ Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on the cusp of winning a second five-year term on Thursday, fighting off concerns about rising unemployment and religious violence to prevail in one of the country's most divisive election campaigns in recent memory.
Partial results released by India's Election Commission _ following seven phases of voting spread over five weeks _ showed Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party leading in 292 of 543 parliamentary races, and parties allied with the BJP leading in several more. A total of 272 seats are needed to secure a majority and select the prime minister.
As votes were tallied early Thursday afternoon, Modi's chief rival, the Indian National Congress, was leading in just 50 races, the second consecutive dismal showing in a national election for what was once India's most powerful political party. The Election Commission did not say what percentage of the vote had been tallied.
If the results hold up, it would be an even bigger victory for Modi than the historic 2014 landslide that brought him to power. As the scale of his triumph seemed to become clear, Modi tweeted: "India wins yet again!"
The dynamic, divisive 68-year-old appeared to have muscled his way to victory by championing Hindu nationalism and strong leadership, qualities that particularly appealed to voters after a terrorist attack against Indian forces in February triggered a brief military skirmish with rival Pakistan and raised the specter of an all-out war.
Led by Modi's chief political strategist, BJP President Amit Shah, the party waged what many critics described as a campaign of fear at the expense of minority Muslims. Modi and other party leaders frequently portrayed the political opposition as being in league with Muslim majority Pakistan, and called on voters to honor soldiers who died in the February attack by supporting the BJP.
"Modi and Amit Shah ran perhaps the most polarizing campaign in Indian history, an acknowledgement that they didn't think their policy record was adequate," said Irfan Nooruddin, director of the Georgetown India Initiative at Georgetown University.
Their tactics "showed a willingness to pander to the most extreme elements of the Hindu right wing," Nooruddin said. "A big win this week will be interpreted as vindication of this strategy, and, minimally, that there was no cost to the polarization caused over the past five years."
Exit polls released this week had indicated that Modi would win comfortably in what has been described as the largest democratic exercise ever held, with 900 million eligible voters. Counting of votes began Thursday morning and was expected to conclude by day's end.
In 2014 the BJP won 282 seats out of 543, a rare single-party majority in a vast, fractious country most often ruled by coalition governments. The landslide reflected broad support for Modi's message of corruption-free governance and economic development for all Indians regardless of social class.
Modi had long been favored to win reelection, particularly with India's diverse political opposition weakened and lacking a leader of anywhere near Modi's stature.
But losses in state elections last year showed that the government was vulnerable on economic issues, and reinvigorated an opposition led by the Congress party and its neophyte president, Rahul Gandhi.
Modi's stewardship of the economy has been called into question, particularly after his controversial 2016 decision to eliminate most of the cash in circulation _ billed as an anti-corruption measure _ kneecapped small businesses and worsened distress among a giant working class that transacts mainly in hard currency.
While India's economy has continued to grow at a respectable annual rate of at least 6%, rising unemployment showed Modi had failed to meet his sweeping promises of providing jobs for the millions of educated young people entering the workforce every year.
"The economic distress in India is very real, but Modi managed to make this an election about leadership by transforming a parliamentary contest into a presidential one, much like he did in 2014," said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"In this, he was aided by recent tensions between India and Pakistan, which brought issues of nationalism, leadership, and muscularity to the fore _ all attributes many voters associate with Modi."
As his economic record came into question, Modi's government turned to darker political appeals as the BJP began to use divisive religious issues to attract support from Hindu voters, who make up nearly 80% of the country's 1.3 billion people.
India's constitution enshrines religious freedom, and for most of the seven decades since independence from Britain, the country has been led by the secular Congress party. But as religious nationalism rises across the globe, Modi has edged India closer to the BJP's long-standing vision of a Hindu nation.
In the last five years, religious minorities, especially Muslims, have faced mob attacks from Hindu vigilante groups emboldened and in some cases directly supported by BJP politicians.
Shah, the BJP president, pledged to institute a controversial citizenship verification process nationwide and "remove every single infiltrator from the country" except Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs _ a clear threat to Muslims, the largest religious minority.
The BJP also ran a parliamentary candidate, Pragya Singh Thakur, who has been indicted in connection with a terrorist attack that killed six people near a mosque in western India in 2008. In a campaign appearance, Thakur called independence leader Mahatma Gandhi's assassin a "patriot" _ an apparent reference to Gandhi's policies of inclusion toward Muslims.
Modi spoke out against Thakur's remark, calling it unforgivable _ but only after voting in her central Indian constituency had ended.
Early returns showed Thakur leading in her race.
(Special correspondent Malhotra reported from New Delhi and Times staff writer Bengali from Singapore.)
