June 4, NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Early vote-counting patterns for Tuesday's general election suggested that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alliance was capturing a majority of seats, but far short of the landslide anticipated in exit polls, TV channels said.
Stocks fell sharply as a result of the trends, which alarmed financial markets that had anticipated a large victory for Modi. At 0800 GMT, the S&P BSE Sensex (.BSESN) was down 5.3% and the blue-chip NIFTY 50 (.NSEI) was down 5.5% on the new tab.
In addition to the rupee's steep decline versus the dollar, benchmark bond yields increased.
The markets had surged on Monday on exit polls from June 1 that predicted a significant win for Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) predicted to secure at least a two-thirds majority.
TV broadcasters reported at 0800 GMT that the NDA was leading in about 300 of the parliament's 543 elective seats, of which 272 have a simple majority. Surprisingly, the opposition INDIA coalition, headed by Rahul Gandhi's centrist Congress party, was ahead in more than 220 seats.
In contrast to the 303 seats it gained in 2019, TV channels revealed that the BJP held over 240 of the seats in which the NDA was leading, falling short of a majority on its own.
Since Modi has dominated the government for the past ten years, a third term for the BJP with a narrow majority or needing to rely on NDA partners for a majority could bring some uncertainty to governance.
Politicians and analysts countered that because the bulk of votes had not yet been tabulated, it was too early to determine any clear trends regarding the voting process.
BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli told the India Today TV program, "It's a fair assessment to say 400 at the moment certainly looks distant," referring to some estimates that predicted the NDA 400 seats.
"But we need to wait...to have a final picture of the seats because the exit polls speak of a massive sweep, (and) the counting trends currently don't seem to match that," he stated.
"The BJP-NDA will form the government, that trend is very clear from the start," he stated.
After the votes closed on June 1, TV exit polls predicted that Modi would win handily. However, exit polls have a history of predicting incorrect election results in India. Sixty-four million of the over one billion voters who were registered to vote actually cast ballots.
