With results still coming in from the Election Commission, the Congress grouping was on track to win around 250 seats against 160 for the main opposition bloc headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“The people of India have spoken and they have spoken with great clarity,” Manmohan Singh told a joint press conference with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Although the Congress alliance was still expected to fall short of the 272 seats required for a majority in the 543-seat parliament, its projected margin of victory was much greater than exit polls had predicted.

A shortfall of just 20 to 30 seats would allow it to pick and choose from India's myriad regional parties to make up the numbers needed for a viable government.

“I would expect all secular parties ... to come together to give this country a stable, strong, purposeful government,” Singh said, adding that it was time for India to show the world that it “stands as one as a nation.”

Congress was expected to pick up more than 190 seats in its own right -- the party's best showing since 1991.

Conceding defeat, the Hindu nationalist BJP admitted that the results were “far below” expectations.

“We accept this verdict of the people,” said senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley.

Outside the Congress party headquarters in New Delhi, supporters banged drums and danced in the street, holding portraits of Sonia Gandhi and the prime minister.

Political analyst Neerja Choudhury said India's 714-million electorate had voted for stability.

“I feel that people did not want anything divisive in these times of uncertainty,” Choudhury said.

After five successive years of near-double digit growth that lent the country the international clout it has long sought, the Indian economy has been badly hit by the global downturn.

And there are major security concerns over growing instability in South Asia, particularly in arch-rival Pakistan, with whom relations plunged to a new low following last year's bloody militant attack on Mumbai.

Exit polls had predicted that only a handful of seats would separate the Congress and BJP alliances -- a scenario that had prompted gloomy forecasts of a badly hung parliament that would throw up a weak, patchwork coalition.

The picture that emerged Saturday was of a far more stable government that would be less vulnerable to the whims of its coalition partners.

“The people of India know what is good for them and they always make the right choice,” Sonia Gandhi said.

Congress spokeswoman Ambika Soni said party leaders and their allies would meet later in the day to discuss how they would go about building the support they need to govern India's 1.1 billion people.

Before Saturday's result, conventional wisdom dictated that the Congress alliance would need the support of its former communist partners who withdrew from the ruling coalition last year in protest over a nuclear deal with the United States.

But the Left was trounced in its stronghold states of West Bengal and Kerala, leaving its leaders to concede that it had lost any kingmaker status.

“We have suffered a major setback,” admitted Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

According to the constitution, a new government must be in place by June 2.

Photo: Indian Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi (L) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh give a press conference at her residence in New Delhi. (AFP/Raveendran) 11:24:37 - Sunday, May 17, 2009