NEW DELHI – India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is to meetcoalition partners to discuss a new government, two BJP sources said onMonday, after exit polls predicted a clear general election victory for theparty led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to the delight of Hindu groups.
The talks will be on Tuesday at the BJP’s headquarters in New Delhi andwill be led by the party president, Amit Shah, one of the party sourcessaid. The sources declined to be identified as they are not authorised tospeak about the meeting.
Nalin Kohli, a spokesman for the BJP, declined to comment.
India’s seven-phase general election, billed as the world’s biggestdemocratic exercise, began on April 11 and ended on Sunday. Votes will becounted on Thursday and results are likely the same day.
Modi’s BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is projected to winanything between 339-365 seats in the 545-member lower house of parliamentwith the Congress-led opposition alliance getting only 77 to 108, an exitpoll from India Today Axis showed on Sunday.
A party needs 272 seats to command a majority.
The predicted BJP margin of victory is bigger than opinion polls indicatedin the run-up to the vote, when most surveys showed the NDA would be thelargest alliance but would fall short of an overall majority.
Arun Jaitley, finance minister in the BJP government, said he was confidentin the exit polls.
“When multiple exit polls convey the same message, the direction of theresult broadly would be in consonance with the message,” Jaitley said in ablog post on Monday.
Indian stock markets and the rupee were sharply higher on expectation thebusiness-friendly Modi would stay on at the helm.
The benchmark NSE share index closed up 3.8%, its best single day sinceSeptember 2013.
“I expect another 2-3% rally in the market in the next three to four daysbased on the cue,” said Samrat Dasgupta, a fund manager at Esquire CapitalInvestment Advisors.
Congress spokesman Sanjay Jha cast doubt on the exit polls, saying onTwitter he believed they were wrong.
“If the exit poll figures are true then my dog is a nuclear scientist,” Jhasaid, adding he expected the next prime minister would come from outsidethe BJP alliance.
Predicting the results of an election with around 900 million voters isnotoriously difficult.
Read Top Stories
In 2004, exit polls expected an NDA government, only to see a Congress-ledalliance sweep to power when votes were counted days later.
Pollsters said they were confident they had picked the correct result thistime around.
“We expect change within the margin of error, but as all polls are in onedirection, it is unlikely the results will be completely in reverse,”Bhawesh Jha, the founder of polling company CNX, told Reuters. His firmexpects the NDA to win 290-310 seats.
Modi and his BJP faced criticism in the run-up to the election overunemployment, in particular for failing to provide opportunities to youngpeople coming on to the job market and for weak farm prices, all of whichwill be pressing issues for any new government.
But Modi rallied his Hindu nationalist base and made national security acentral theme of the campaign after a surge in tension with Pakistan inFebruary following a suicide bomb attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir byPakistan based militants.
Modi ordered air strikes on a suspected militant camp in Pakistan, whichled to a surge in tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
But many Indians applauded Modi’s tough stand and he was able to attack theopposition for being soft on security.
Hindu groups, which largely reined in their rhetoric during the campaign,are now expected to press the BJP for several demands, including a templededicated to the Hindu god Ram on a disputed site, life in jail for killingcows and ending the autonomy of India’s only Muslim-majority state.
“We did not want the opposition to make it an issue against the BJP, so hadstopped our agitation,” Mahendra Rawat, the Delhi head for the BJP’s parentorganisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, told Reuters on Monday. “The Ramtemple is the biggest issue for us Hindus.”
Ram Madhav, a senior leader in the BJP, told Reuters partner ANI theresults would be even better for the party than the exit polls weresuggesting, particularly in West Bengal state.
West Bengal has the third largest number of members of parliament and hasbeen hotly contested between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress, one of themost powerful parties in the coalition trying to unseat Modi.
“Bengal will surprise all the pollsters, we are hoping to do extremely wellthere,” Madhav said. “Everyone has seen the tremendous support for PM Modiand the BJP in Bengal.”
