Results day in India（打印版）

Counting has begun in India as the marathon general election in the world's largest democracy finally draws to a close.

The ruling Congress-led alliance（结盟，联盟） is battling the opposition BJP coalition and a host of regional parties.

Most analysts and exit polls（选后测验） suggest no party will gain an overall majority.

Parties will have about two weeks to hammer out a workable government acceptable to the president. Parliament must then be constituted by 2 June.

Turnout（出席） for the election has been put at about 60%, compared with 58% in 2004.

Security has so far generally been considered a success, although about 60 people lost their lives, mostly in Maoist violence.

Counting of the electronic voting machines began at 0800 local time (0230 GMT) and the first trends are expected to be available within 30 to 45 minutes.

The BBC's Sanjoy Majumder says there is a lot of security at the counting station he is attending in Delhi but that the atmosphere is festive（喜庆的，欢庆的）.

The announcement of official results may take a while longer but the trends are likely to be reliable as they will be drawn from Election Commission results.

But given the expected tightness of the contest, correspondents say the real guessing game may only begin after all the results are declared.

Since polling ended on Wednesday, the two main parties have been involved in a series of political meetings, scrambling（不规则性） to gain pledges（保证，誓言）of support in the predicted hung parliament.

Our correspondent, Sanjoy Majumder, says there have been suggestions that both the Congress and BJP are losing relevance（相关性，关联） in India, ceding political space to smaller, local parties.

A strong performance will come as a major boost, he says, but a defeat will certainly spell the political end of the BJP's LK Advani and question the leadership quality of Rahul Gandhi, the latest member of the influential dynasty to head Congress.

Security is tight in a number of areas ahead of the results announcement.

The BBC's Narayan Bareth in Jaipur, Rajasthan, says meetings of five or more people have been banned across the state with paramilitaries and armed police deployed.

Caste clashes in the state in 2007 and 2008 left 70 people dead.

The BBC's Binoo Joshi in Jammu says candidates arrived at counting stations at 0600 after morning prayers.

There have been violent demonstrations（示范，实证）against the elections in parts of the Kashmir valley in recent weeks, although all the five phases of polling passed off by and large peacefully.

After the counting the focus will fall on President Pratibha Patil.

There are no rules in the constitution on who she can invite to form a government. It could be the single largest party or most dominant coalition.（结合，合并） She may ask for documented pledges of support.

As the marathon five-phase general election draws to a close, the government is breathing a sigh of relief that it has been largely trouble-free.

A senior home ministry official told the Times of India: "Although we cannot afford to be complacent（满足的，自满的） now... it certainly gives us a kind of satisfaction that we could succeed in preventing any terror attack on the mainland."(本文由在线英语听力室整理编辑)

Results day in India（在线收听）