Modi eyes power as Obama makes pledge to new India leader

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4. US would welcome Modi as India leader despite past visa ban

http://bdnews24.com/world/2014/05/13/us-would-welcome-modi-as-india-leader-despite-past-visa-ban

US would welcome Modi as India leader despite past visa ban
>> Reuters
Published: 2014-05-13 11:42:59.0 BdST Updated: 2014-05-13 11:42:59.0 BdST

President Barack Obama faces the prospect this week of having to offer his congratulations to a new Indian leader who was barred from the United States less than 10 years ago over massacres of Muslims in 2002.

As voting concluded in India's general election on Monday, four major exit polls showed Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi set to become prime minister, with his opposition party and its allies forecast to sweep to a parliamentary majority.

A Modi victory would be a blow for campaigners who have long maintained he is an autocratic Hindu supremacist responsible for an outbreak of religious riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002 in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died.

Modi was shunned by Western nations for years after the bloodshed in Gujarat, where he has been chief minister since 2001. He was denied a U.S. visa in 2005 under the terms of a 1998 US law which bars entry to foreigners who have committed "particularly severe violations of religious freedom."

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