Vote-counting begins in India's elections

NEW DELHI, May 14 (UPI) -- With end of the mammoth elections, India's plethora of parties from the far right to extreme left Thursday awaited the results of vote-counting.

Results of the monthlong, five-phase balloting across 28 states and seven federal territories from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean, and from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea,with an electorate of 715 million, won't be known until Saturday.

Voters picked members for the 545-member lower house of Parliament where the majority party or coalition will rule the country in the next five years, and also various state assemblies.

No party was expected to emerge a clear winner, but exit polls showed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance may have emerged as the single largest grouping, with the opposition-led Bharatiya Janata Party's NDA alliance a close second, the Press Trust of India reported.

Various television channels predicted a deeply divided verdict, which would make formation of the next government a formidable task.

The country's jittery stock markets reflected the trend as stock prices on major exchanges fell in early trading Thursday.

CNN quoted an election commission spokesman as saying there was a 62 percent voter turnout on the last day of balloting Wednesday.

India is the world's largest democracy. The elections had to be spread over five phases to cover the vast subcontinent and to ensure security at the polling places. There were incidents of violence despite heavy security, resulting in more than a dozen deaths.