NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Partyled National Democratic Alliance is expected to win India’s general elections comfortably, with exit polls commissioned by various TV channels giving it a majority or putting it well within shouting distance of forming the next government. The results of the surveys back up opinion polls that predicted the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi will take over at the head of an NDA government after votes are counted on May 16, ending the decade-long rule of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.The figures predicted by various pollsters come very close to NDA’s total tally of 296 in 1999, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee led the coalition to its second consecutive victory.Of all the channels, only Times NOW gave NDA cause for worry by not predicting a simple majority.It gave BJP and its allies 249-265 seats, still putting NDA in a comfortable zone, requiring just 20 or so seats from post-poll allies.The other channels that released their post-poll surveys on Monday predicted an easy win for NDA with CNN-IBN forecasting about 280, Headlines Today 272, India TV 289, ABP 281 and News 24 up to 340 seats in a house of 543.To be sure, Indian exit polls have a history of being off the mark. In 2004, they forecast a win for NDA and a hung House in 2009. Both times, UPA came to power.But if BJP manages to win more than the 206 seats that Congress got in 2009 and if NDA’s tally surpasses UPA’s 259, the new government may well be one of the strongest in recent times with the party not needing to go in for any hard bargaining with post-poll allies.Such a situation, according to BJP leaders who did not want to be identified, will give Modi a free hand to form the government and make it decisive in terms of policy formulation and implementation of tough non-populist decisions.The markets have been rising to successive highs on expectations that NDA would be well-placed to form the next government and shot up to record levels on Monday as well, even before the exit poll results were announced.While exit surveys put the NDA toll in the 249-340 range, Modi’s close associate Amit Shah said he expects the BJP-led grouping’s tally could cross 300. “I personally believe, after having spoken to party workers, that BJP will win between 250-260 seats on its own and NDA” could end up with 290-305 seats, Shah told a television channel. Modi had entrusted Shah with orchestrating the campaign in Uttar Pradesh, India’s politically most critical state as it sends 80 lawmakers to Parliament.Sociologist Dipankar Gupta said the exit poll results suggested a win for Modi rather than his party. “It looks like this (NDA government) will be the strongest government since the mandate won by Rajiv Gandhi in 1984. But overall, I would say this is expected to be a Modi victory and not a BJP victory.”Though there is no one-to-one correlation between an NDA victory and the big turnout could have been triggered by the electorate’s ire against the incumbent.“The highest voter turnout in India’s democratic history in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections is a clear signal that people want a stable and effective government enjoying an absolute majority,” said BJP president Rajnath Singh said in a statement.While Congress leaders didn’t seem to be too keen to comment on the exit surveys, Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah lashed out at the TV channels’ findings.“The only exit poll that matters is the one that is slated for Friday, the rest are all great time pass,” he tweeted. Another tweet highlighted the wide divergence in some of the numbers: “So one channel gives Congress only 2 in Rajasthan and another gives them 14. Did these channels cover the same election?”The predictions of an NDA victory are primarily based on survey results showing BJP and its allies doing exceedingly well in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, which account for 168 seats and also in BJP’s strongholds of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.Times NOW’s poll conducted by ORG gives BJP 46-52 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 27-31 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra. The exit polls conducted after ballots were cast during the various phases from April 7 to May 12 and telecast after voting ended on Monday predicted an upsurge in BJP vote share across states where it had not won many votes or seats last time such as Odisha, West Bengal, Andhra and Tamil Nadu.The big surprise was Times NOW’s prediction of a rout for Lalu Prasad’s RJD in Bihar. The channel predicted a landslide of 28 seats for BJP and its ally Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, while giving just two seats to RJD and Congress. BJP’s Sushil Modi, former state deputy chief minister, said his party’s tally will cross 30 in Bihar.Congress is expected to do badly in states where it did not have allies such as Tamil Nadu, Seemandhra and West Bengal.It’s predicted to draw a blank in these states with just one or two seats in West Bengal. No channel has given even a single seat to Congress in Seemandhra, where people are distressed over the breaking up of Andhra Pradesh.It doesn’t seem to have done too well there either with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti set to win more seats than Congress. Almost every channel showed the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party winning some seats. While CNN-IBN gave it 0-2 seats in Delhi and 1-3 in Punjab for a total of 3-7, other pollsters such as ABP gave it four, India TV five and News 24 six.But what could be disheartening for the new party is that it’s not expected to pick up any seats in Haryana, where one of its leaders Yogendra Yadav was a contestant. However, if the exit polls turn out to be correct, they would suggest the party has become a key player in north India in a very short time.Though the southern states traditionally don’t provide much support for BJP, it is expected to do well in Karnataka with Times NOW predicting 18-22 seats. Headlines Today, however, said BJP’s tally would decline by a few seats in the state.