With most of the votes counted, Modi's stunning re-election mirrored a global trend of right-wing populists sweeping to victory, from the United States to Brazil to Italy, often on a platform promoting a tough stand on national security, protectionist trade policies and putting up barriers to immigration.
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Election Commission data showed Modi's Bharatia Janata winning 158 seats and in the lead for 145 more, which would catapult the party well beyond the simple majority in the 545-member lower house of Parliament required to govern. The results spelled another nail in the coffin of the main opposition Indian National Congress party, which picked up 31 seats and was leading in 21 other contests.
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An estimated 600 million voters cast ballots in India's six-week polls, a testimony to the vibrancy of the world's largest democracy just 72 years since India won independence from British colonial rule.

Voters expressed confidence that Modi could jumpstart India's stalling economy, despite his poor first-term record and failure to deliver on his pledge to create jobs.

The BJP harnessed social media, including Twitter, where Modi has 47.4 million followers, and WhatsApp to reach out to millions of supporters.
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Mohit Sharma, a 29-year-old who runs a bathroom fittings business, said India had never had a prime minister like Modi. "In the past, when leaders after they won elections, they sat in air-conditioned rooms and they never reached out to people, but Modi was never like that. He was always connected to the people through social media," Sharma said.

Of the 3.4 billion accounts removed in the six-month period, 1.2 billion came during the fourth quarter of 2018 and 2.2 billion during the first quarter of this year. More than 99 percent of these were disabled before someone reported them to the company. In the April-September period last year, Facebook blocked 1.5 billion accounts.

Facebook attributed the spike in the removed accounts to "automated attacks by bad actors who attempt to create large volumes of accounts at one time." The company declined to say where these attacks originated, only that they were from different parts of the world.