Results day in India : BJP Concedes Defeate

Leaders of India's main opposition BJP have admitted defeat in the general election as counting trends show the ruling Congress alliance well ahead.

Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley said: "We accept this verdict." The Third Front has also conceded the election.

Official results will flood in soon but the trends reported by state TV showed Congress ahead in 246 seats, the BJP in 159 and the Third Front in 60.

Congress supporters have already begun celebrating in Delhi.

Rajnath Singh, president of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters it had not expected this kind of result. "We will sit together later today, once all the results are out, and analyse what happened," he said.

Mr Jaitley said: "Something certainly did go wrong... Our performance was not up to expectation."

Prakash Karat, the leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the key mover in the Third Front, accepted Congress had won.

"The CPM and the Left parties have suffered a major setback," he said.

The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says that a small crowd has already gathered outside Congress headquarters to celebrate, banging drums and chanting slogans.

'Safe majority'

Counting began at 0800 local time (0230 GMT) and with electronic voting machines being used the first trends were quickly available.


INDIAN ELECTION AT A GLANCE
Eligible voters: 714 million
Polling centres: 828,804
Voting days: 16, 23, 30 April; 7, 13 May
Vote counting: 16 May

Elections battleground map

State television Doordarshan said that at 1330 local time across all 543 seats, the Congress alliance was ahead in 246, the BJP coalition in 159 and the Third Front in 60 with others at 78.

Congress appears to be doing far better than had been expected, confounding predictions particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

Congress alliance spokesman Kapil Sibal told Reuters news agency: "Together with our alliance partners, we will have a safe majority."