India's Main Opposition Party Concedes Defeat

May 16, 2009

The main Indian opposition party, the BJP, has conceded general election defeat as results showed the Congress Party-led coalition was heading towards a clear victory.

Congress Party supporters celebrate their lead during the vote counting process

"The Congress has the biggest mandate," said senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley.

"I think if Congress wants to compliment some of its leaders in this hour of victory, I think they're entitled to do so."

Earlier, a BJP spokesman said the party was "disappointed" with the numbers of votes received.

Meanwhile, India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh looks to be heading for a second term.

TV news channels have called the election in his left-of-centre coalition's favour based on more than 70 percent of votes counted.

Reporting from Delhi, Sky's India correspondent Alex Crawford said: "There are people celebrating outside the home of Sonia Gandhi - the President of the Congress party already.

"The so-called Third Front - the alliance of left-wing parties headed by Mayawati, the Dalit chief minister of Uttar Pradesh - does not appear to be doing so well."

The CNN-IBN channel indicated the Congress-led alliance could win more than 240 seats, and the alliance led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party could take 160. The NDTV channel gave Congress 241 and the BJP 165.

If the trends continue it would be a better than expected result for Congress and a clear victory, but still short of the 272 seats needed to govern on its own - meaning the winning party would need to form a coalition.

India has been ruled by coalition governments for most of the last two decades, including the current alliance, led by the Congress party.

The long season produced few central issuesacross the wildly diverse nation of 1.2bn people and 714m eligible voters.

Total voter turnout was approximately 60%, the national election commission said, up slightly from 58% in the last national vote in 2004.