India's ruling Congress-led alliance has declared victory in national elections, crushing its Hindu nationalist rivals and setting up a second term for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
With results still coming in from the Election Commission, projections give the Congress grouping as many as 250 seats against 160 for the main opposition bloc headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Although the Congress alliance is still expected to fall short of the 272 seats required for a majority in the 543-seat parliament, its projected margin of victory is much greater than exit polls had predicted.
A shortfall of just 20 to 30 seats would allow it to pick and choose from India's myriad regional parties to make up the numbers needed for a viable government.
Congress was expected to pick up more than 190 seats in its own right - the party's best showing since 1991.
Conceding defeat, the Hindu nationalist BJP admitted that the results were 'far below' expectations.
After five successive years of near-double digit growth that gave the country the international clout it has long sought, the Indian economy has been badly hit by the global downturn.
There are also major security concerns over growing instability in South Asia, particularly in arch-rival Pakistan, with whom relations plunged to a new low following last year's bloody militant attack on Mumbai.
Exit polls had predicted that only a handful of seats would separate the Congress and BJP alliances - a scenario that had prompted gloomy forecasts of a hung parliament that would throw up a weak, patchwork coalition.
The picture that emerged today was of a far more stable government that would be less vulnerable to the whims of its coalition partners.
Before today's result, conventional wisdom dictated that the Congress alliance would need the support of the communist parties who withdrew from the ruling coalition last year in protest over a nuclear deal with the US.
But the Left was trounced in its stronghold states of West Bengal and Kerala, leaving its leaders to concede that it had lost any kingmaker status.
According to the constitution, a new government must be in place by 2 June.
