Preliminary results show that India’s moderate Congress Party has swept national elections, re-electing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a parliamentary majority which promises to see much needed political reforms instituted in the world’s largest democracy.  State television says Congress’s alliance has won or is ahead in 263 seats, compared with the BJP’s (154), the Third Front (60) and others (66).

NPR Reports:

Defying almost all predictions of a tight national election, a hung parliament and weeks of political horse-trading, hundreds of millions of Indian voters have given the incumbent prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and his centrist United Progressive Alliance an unexpected and surprisingly decisive victory.

The winning margin was so large that Singh’s Congress party and his closest allies, with 260 seats and two races undecided, came close to a 272-seat majority in the 543-seat parliament. The assumption that India, with its many divisive communities and ideologies, was doomed to weak coalition governments for the foreseeable future was swept away in ballot boxes across the country.

This result has the potential to do away with the tense coalition politics of his last term in which the communists fiercely opposed any reforms put the brakes on moves to free up the economy.

India’s Sensex index gained 17% on the news, forcing the Bombay Stock Exchange to shut down for the day.

Bloomberg reports:

“This is an absolute game changer,” said William Nobrega, the co-author of ‘Riding The Indian Tiger,’ who advises U.S. companies on investing in the world’s largest democracy. “It can truly move India in a much faster pace to where it deserves to be in the global economy.”

Political stability will make India a more attractive investment destination as Singh, 76, seeks the funds to stimulate Asia’s third-largest economy.

“There were so many major initiatives that were sidelined,” Nobrega said. “It will have a phenomenal boost on the Indian economy this year and next.”

Singh is the first Indian Prime Minister to be re-elected to office after serving a full five-year term since first PM Jawaharlal Nehru.

AFP Reports:

As finance minister in the early 1990s, Singh initiated the sea change that began the opening of India’s inward-looking economy to the world, earning him the sobriquet of the country’s economic “liberator.”

A former governor of the International Monetary Fund, Singh became the first Sikh prime minister of [India]… when he was nominated for the job by Sonia Ghandi when the Congress Party returned to power in 2004.

After a heart bypass operation in January, Singh took only a minor role in the elections, leaving the campaigning to Rahul Gandhi, the heir of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, and his mother Sonia Gandhi, who is president of the Congress party.

Now Singh — a married man with three daughters — is expected by many observers to step aside midway through his new five-year mandate for Rahul.