New Delhi: Record 551 million people have given a simple majority to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who has become the largest party as it leads in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Vote counting started at 2.30am GMT (10am AEST) on Friday after a six-week parliamentary election that saw a record 551 million people hit the polls.
Workers of the BJP at the party’s headquarter in New Delhi passed around traditional sweets and chanted tributes to leader Narendra Modi, who is likely to emerge as prime minister.
The 16th Lok Sabha elections, which ended on Monday, saw the highest ever turnout in India for any general election. A total of 551.3 million people—or 66.38% of the total electorate—came out to vote in an election which was spread over a month and nine phases.
“People have voted for development and progress. People are restless for change. They will feel liberated once results are announced,” BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told reporters.
Election Commission officials have banned victory processions in India’s holiest Hindu city of Varanasi, where Modi is standing, and throughout the electorally critical northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The state’s chief election official, Umesh Sinha, told AFP the decision was “ultimately aimed at maintaining law and order in the state”.
Uttar Pradesh is one of India’s most sensitive states and violence in Muzaffarnagar district last September between Muslims and Hindus left some 50 people dead and forced thousands to flee their homes.
The ruling Congress party, has accepted the defeat who had warned that a BJP victory will stoke interreligious tensions in the Hindu-majority country.
Violence flared in the southern city of Hyderabad on Wednesday in which three people were killed during clashes between Muslims and Sikhs.
Hundreds of police and paramilitary forces patrolled the old quarter of Hyderabad — an IT hub that is home to giants Google and Microsoft — enforcing a curfew Thursday, one day after mobs destroyed homes and other property.
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