Modi on course to become India's next PM

New Delhi

HINDU nationalist Narendra Modi is set to become India's next prime minister, exit polls showed yesterday, with his opposition party and its allies forecast to sweep to a parliamentary majority in the world's biggest-ever election.

Indian elections are notoriously hard to call, however, due to the country's diverse electorate and a parliamentary system in which local candidates hold great sway. Pre-election opinion polls and post-voting exit polls both have a patchy record.

Mr Modi, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has dominated the lengthy contest with a media-savvy campaign that has hinged on vows to kick-start India's economy an…