Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, TV exit polls said, suggesting it would do better than expected by most analysts.
Most exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win a two-thirds majority in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority will allow the government to usher in far-reaching amendments in the constitution.
A summary of six exit polls projected the NDA could win between 355 and 380 seats, a number that is likely to boost financial markets when they reopen on Monday. The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 general election, of which BJP accounted for 303.
The opposition “INDIA” alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was projected to win between 125 to 165 seats.
In his first comments after voting ended, Modi claimed victory without referring to the exit polls.
“I can say with confidence that the people of India have voted in record numbers to re-elect the NDA government,” he said on X, without providing evidence of his claim.
“The opportunistic INDI Alliance failed to strike a chord with the voters. They are casteist, communal and corrupt.”
Exit polls, which are conducted by polling agencies, have a patchy record in India as they have often got the outcome wrong, with analysts saying it is a challenge to get them right in the large and diverse country.
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 and many political analysts had predicted the BJP’s margin of victory would be narrower than or close to the 2019 tally.
The opposition dismissed the exit polls, and ahead of their publication had called them “prefixed”. Most opposition parties accuse India’s main news channels of being biased in favour of Modi, charges the channels deny. They also say exit polls in India are mostly unscientific.”This is a government exit poll, this is Narendra Modi’s exit poll,” Supriya Shrinate, the Congress’s social media head, told news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
“We have a sense of how many seats we are winning, it will not be one seat less than 259,” she said.
