Indian election vote count begins

NEW DELHI - Counting of votes for India's general elections began Friday, with the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading in early trends.

The counting began at 8 am local time at over 1,000 centers across India and will conclude by this evening, an election official said.

Indians vote in final phase of national elections

There was a record turnout in this year's election, with 66.38 percent of India's 814 million eligible voters casting ballots during the six-week contest, which was held in stages across the country. Turnout in the 2009 elections was 58.13 percent.

Exit polls have predicted a clear win for the BJP and its allies while defeat for the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance for its inability to tackle corruption and inflation.

BJP's Narendra Modi is widely tipped to become the next prime minister of India.

If the results of the world's largest election are in line with exit polls, the BJP and its allies will win an absolute majority of more than 272 seats in the lower house of parliament, where 543 seats are at stake.

That would open the way for Modi, 63, to act quickly to form the core of a new government by naming loyalists to the prized cabinet posts of finance, home, defence and external affairs.

Betting on that outcome, foreign investors have poured more than 16 billion US dollars into Indian stocks and bonds in the past six months and now hold over 22 percent of Mumbai-listed equities - a stake estimated by Morgan Stanley at almost 280 billion US dollars.

But with markets racing higher, anything short of a ringing endorsement for Modi and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could trigger volatile trading on Friday.

"The bar for the opposition team has risen significantly," investment bank DBS wrote in a note on Thursday.

"Compared with pre-poll surveys where NDA's tally averaged around 250, the average has moved up to 280 in the exit polls. This suggests that if the actual tally is closer to 250-260 seats, the markets might be disappointed."

Modi Wave

Since being named as his party's candidate last September, Modi has flown 300,000 km and addressed 457 rallies in a slick, presidential-style campaign that has broken the mould of Indian politics.

In so doing, Modi has outclassed Rahul Gandhi - the fourth-generation scion of the Congress party's Nehru-Gandhi dynasty - while burnishing his pro-business record as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who as finance minister launched reforms in 1991 that brought an end to decades of economic isolation, has already bid farewell to his staff after a decade in office marked by mounting policy paralysis.

Modi's mantra of development has won over many voters sceptical about his Hindu-centric ideology.

Exit polls estimate that the BJP's vote share rose by 15 percentage points to 34 percent. Under India's first-past-the-post system, that may be enough for the BJP to take battleground states like Uttar Pradesh - home to one in every six Indians.