Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the country 'wins yet again' after his party won the general election.
Modi took to Twitter after the victory, promising to build a strong and inclusive nation.
He said: 'Together we grow. Together we prosper. Together we will build a strong and inclusive India. India wins yet again!'
Early vote counting from the six-week election shows the Bharatiya Janata Party leading in contests for 302 out of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament, with its main rival, the Indian National Congress, ahead in just 51 contests.
The news has sent the stock market soaring in anticipation of another five-year term for the Hindu nationalist leader.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the country 'wins yet again' after his party secured victory in the general election. Pictured: Modi (left) and Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah celebrate victory in New Delhi
The pair were showered with petals as they flashed the victory sign outside BJP headquarters. Modi said: 'The faith placed in our alliance is humbling and gives us strength to work even harder to fulfill people's aspirations'
Bharatiya Janata Party supporters were seen celebrating in the streets in Siliguri, as early vote counting shows the BJP leading in contests for 299 out of 542 seats in the lower house of Parliament
Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan congratulated his Indian counterpart for his success on Twitter (pictured)
The data didn't indicate what percentage of the estimated 600 million votes had been counted. The final tally was expected by Thursday evening at the earliest.
Today, Modi and BJP president Amit Shah arrived outside the party's headquarters where they flashed the victory sign and were showered in petals.
Modi said: 'The faith placed in our alliance is humbling and gives us strength to work even harder to fulfil people's aspirations.'
Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan congratulated his Indian counterpart for his success, tweeting that he looked forward to working with Mr Modi 'for peace, progress and prosperity in South Asia'.
Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations.
The two nuclear-armed rivals were close to a major conflict in February when Indian aircraft launched a strike in Pakistan in response to a February 14 suicide bombing in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir that killed 40 troops.
India blamed the bombing on Pakistan-based militants. Pakistan retaliated by shooting down a fighter jet the next day and detaining its pilot, who was later returned to India.
Since then tension has eased between them.
Congress party president Rahul Gandhi conceded defeat for his own parliamentary seat to his BJP rival in Amethi, a constituency in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh that had for decades been a Congress party bastion.
Congress, the party of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and peace activist Mahatma Gandhi, ruled India for nearly half a century after it achieved independence from Britain in 1947.
In 2014, it won only 44 seats, and was projected to win only slightly more this time.
Under Indian law, a candidate can run in more than one constituency, and Mr Gandhi was leading by more than 400,000 votes for a seat in the southern Indian state of Kerala.
Congress party president Rahul Gandhi conceded defeat for his own parliamentary seat to his BJP rival in Amethi. Pictured: BJP supporters greeting Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state Yogi Adityanath today
Outside BJP headquarters in New Delhi, hundreds of people cheered and shouted party slogans, lifting cardboard cut-outs of Modi
'If they want to change anything, change the leadership,' said a Congress official in the western state of Rajasthan, referring to the old guard around Gandhi. 'You need to give young people a chance.'
He was among five current and three former party officials who said that Gandhi's inability to jettison older leaders responsible for a major debacle in the 2014 general election and push forward newer, younger faces was a mistake.
The election has been seen as a referendum on Modi, whose economic reforms have had mixed results but whose popularity as a social underdog in India's highly stratified society has endured.
Critics have said his Hindu-first platform risks exacerbating social tensions in the country of 1.3 billion people.
On the campaign trail, Modi presented himself as a self-made man with the confidence to cut red tape and unleash India's economic potential, and labeled Gandhi, the scion of a political dynasty that lost power in 2014, as an out-of-touch elite.
Half a dozen exit polls released after voting concluded Sunday showed Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party winning.
A party or coalition needs a simple majority of 272 seats, or just over half the seats in Parliament's lower house, to govern.
If BJP's lead holds, it won't need a coalition partner to stay in power and could even improve its position compared to 2014, when it won 282 seats.
This election may mark the first time in the party's history that it has won two consecutive elections on its own.
World leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, congratulated Modi on Twitter.
'Mr. Modi's going to be the next prime minister, we are very assured of that,' said Meenakshi Lekhi, a member of Parliament running for re-election in New Delhi.
By midmorning, India's Sensex had jumped 2.3 per cent to an all-time high over 40,000.
The election has been seen as a referendum on Modi, whose economic reforms have had mixed results but whose popularity as a social underdog in India's highly stratified society has endured. Pictured: Modi supporters celebrating in New Delhi
Trends in the election data suggest that BJP's strategy of pursuing an aggressive campaign in eastern India paid off, with the party breaking into the citadels of Trinamool Congress Party in West Bengal state and the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha state.
Picking up seats in these two states would compensate for projected losses in Uttar Pradesh in northern India.
The biggest losers appear to be the communists who ruled West Bengal state for 34 years until they were ousted by Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress Party in 2011.
Coalition partners of the Congress-led government in New Delhi between 2004 and 2008, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was leading in only three constituencies and the Communist Party of India in two constituencies.
Outside BJP headquarters in New Delhi, hundreds of people cheered and shouted party slogans, lifting cardboard cut-outs of Modi and BJP President Amit Shah into the air as other people played drums and set off fireworks.
The BJP harnessed social media, including Twitter, where Modi has 47.4 million followers, and WhatsApp to reach out to millions of supporters.
Meanwhile, at Congress headquarters, only a few party workers stood outside looking dejected.
The news has sent the stock market soaring in anticipation of another five-year term for the Hindu nationalist leader. Pictured: BJP workers lighting firecrackers outside their headquarters in New Delhi
Jagdish Sharma, 50, blamed the counting method, using electronic voting machines, saying 'Rahul Gandhi is the crowd's favorite, but has always lost only due to EVMs. While EVMs exist even Lord Vishnu can't defeat Modi,' he said, referring to a powerful Hindu god.
Voters cast ballots on some 40 million electronic voting machines, a method India began using 15 years ago after complaints that the manual count of paper ballots was tainted by fraud and abuse.
But losing candidates and political parties have raised doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the electronic method, doing so again this week.
Top opposition leaders met with Election Commission officials on Tuesday after videos appeared on social media showing some electronic voting machines being moved.
The party officials alleged that the machines were going to be altered, but the commission said the images showed unused machines being moved into storage.
The machines print a paper slip each time a vote is cast that is locked inside a box. A random sampling of a small percentage of paper printouts will be checked against the computerized results.
The time it takes to compare the paper and digital ballots is expected to delay the results by several hours.
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