Modi's party has commanding lead as Indian votes are counted

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party had a commanding lead as votes were counted Thursday after a six-week general election, sending the stock market soaring in anticipation of another five-year term for the Hindu nationalist leader.

Election Commission data by late morning showed the Bharatiya Janata Party leading in contests for 291 out of 542 seats in the lower house of Parliament, with its main rival, the Indian National Congress, ahead in 50 contests.

The data didn't indicate what percentage of the estimated 600 million votes had been counted. The count was expected to conclude by Thursday evening.

Half a dozen exit polls released after voting concluded Sunday showed Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party winning. A party or coalition needs a simple majority, or 272 of the seats in Parliament's lower house, to govern.

"Mr. Modi's going to be the next prime minister, we are very assured of that," said Meenakshi Lekhi, a member of Parliament running for re-election in New Delhi.

By midmorning, India's Sensex had jumped 2.3% to an all-time high over 40,000.

Outside BJP headquarters in New Delhi, hundreds of people cheered and shouted party slogans, lifting cardboard cut-outs of Modi and BJP President Amit Shah into the air as other people played drums.

Mohit Sharma, a 29-year-old who runs a bathroom fittings business, said India had never had a prime minister like Modi.

"In the past, when leaders after they won elections, they sat in air-conditioned rooms and they never reached out to people, but Modi was never like that. He was always connected to the people through social media," Sharma said.

The BJP harnessed social media, including Twitter, where Modi has the world's second-highest number of followers, and WhatsApp to reach out to millions of supporters.

Meanwhile, at Congress headquarters, only a few party workers stood outside looked dejected.

Top opposition leaders met with Election Commission officials on Tuesday after videos appeared on social media showing some electronic voting machines being moved. The party officials alleged that the machines were being moved in order to be altered, but the commission said the images showed unused machines being moved into storage.

The machines print a paper slip each time a vote is cast that is locked inside a box. A small percentage of the boxes will be opened and the printouts checked against the computerized results. The time it takes to count the paper ballots is expected to delay the results by several hours.