Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's alliance is winning a majority of seats about halfway through the count in the general election, but the numbers are well short of the landslide predicted in exit polls, TV channels say.
Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was falling short of a majority of its own in the 543-member parliament, election trends showed. Having to depend on allies to form the government could introduce some uncertainty in policy-making as Modi has ruled with an authoritative hold in the last decade.
The Hindu nationalist BJP won a majority of its own when it swept to power in 2014, ending India's era of unstable coalition governments, and repeated the feat in 2019.
At 7pm AEST, TV channels showed the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was ahead in nearly 300 of the 543 elective seats in parliament, where 272 is a simple majority, with about half the votes counted.
They showed BJP accounted for under 250 of the seats in which the NDA was leading, compared to the 303 it won in 2019.
The opposition INDIA alliance led by Rahul Gandhi's centrist Congress party was leading in over 220 seats, higher than expected. Congress alone was leading in nearly 100 seats, almost double the 52 it won in 2019 - a surprise jump that is expected to boost Gandhi's standing.
However, politicians and analysts said it was too early to get a firm idea of voting trends since counting still had some way to go.
"It's a fair assessment to say 400 at the moment certainly looks distant," BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli told the India Today TV channel, referring to some projections that gave over 400 seats to the NDA.
"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.
"The BJP-NDA will form the government, that trend is very clear from the start," he added.
Nearly one billion people were eligible to vote in the seven-phase, seven-week poll that began on April 19 and was held in searing temperatures touching nearly 50C in some parts.
More than 66 per cent of registered voters - 642 million - turned out, just one percentage point lower than the previous election in 2019, squashing pre-poll concerns that voters might shun a contest thought to be a foregone conclusion in Modi's favour.
Modi, 73, who first swept to power in 2014 by promising growth and change, is seeking to be only the second prime minister after India's independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to win three straight terms.
He began his campaign by showcasing his record in office including economic growth, welfare policies, national pride, Hindu nationalism and his own personal commitment to fulfilling promises which he called "Modi's Guarantee".
However, he changed tack after low voter turnout in the first phase and accused the opposition, especially the Congress party, which leads an alliance of two dozen groups, of favouring India's 200 million Muslims - a shift analysts said made the campaign coarse and divisive.
They said the pivot may have been aimed at firing up the Hindu nationalist base of Modi's BJP to draw them to vote. Modi defended himself against criticism that he was stoking divisions between Hindus and Muslims to win votes and said that he was only faulting the opposition campaign.
The opposition INDIA alliance denied it favoured Muslims in the Hindu-majority country and said Modi would destroy the constitution if he returned to power and end affirmative action enjoyed by the so-called backward castes. The BJP rejects this.
