Polls show change for India

On Tuesday, India's Mail Today led with the headline "Modi at Delhi Gate" and the Hindustan Times went with "Exit Polls: Enter Modi" after several surveys released after voting ended Monday pointed to a decisive result.

Most exit polls predict that Narenda Modi and his alliance will secure a simple majority in India's legislature,or 272 of parliament's 543 seats.

Amit Shah, the opposition candidate's top aide, predicted that the margin of victory would prove even wider when official results come on Friday, though he added that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader would consider new coalition partners.

Modi has struck a conciliatory tone by calling now a time for "healing," after a hard-fought and occasionally vicious campaign that saw 551 million people vote in a five-week period, during which economics proved a key issue for voters - to the detriment of other key topics for India.

Though many expected a BJP victory, such a large defeat for Rahul Gandhi's Congress - in recent years plagued by corruption allegations - came as a surprise, with exit polls showing support at a low for the party, which has ruled India for most of the post-independence era.

US President Barack Obama, the leader of the world's second biggest democracy, said India had "set an example for the world" as he hailed the contest as "a vibrant demonstration of our shared values of diversity and freedom."

Modi's critics have long called him an autocratic Hindu supremacist responsible for an outbreak of religious riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died. The candidate has denied any wrongdoing, and, in 2010, India's Supreme Court ruled that he had no case to answer.

mkg/kms (Reuters, AFP, AP)