Narendra Modi, India’s popular and polarizing politician is likely to emerge as the leader of the world’s largest democracy a new opinion poll has predicted.

Modi’s Hindu BJP party is expected to be the single largest party in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls  with 217 seats while Congress, the leader of the governing NDA, will be reduced to about 73 seats, the opinion poll has predicted.

Interestingly, the poll also points out that NDA has gained 10 seats more as compared to the opinion poll conducted in January this year. 

Congress, which came out with flying colours in the last General Elections, would be confined to 73 seats, while the fledging AAP is likely to get around 10 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, the opinion poll predicted. 

The federal election in India is scheduled for May.

As far as the choice of prime ministerial candidate was concerned, Modi, backed by over 57 per cent respondents, appears to be leading when compared with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who has scored 18 per cent. 

Former Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal was preferred by just three per cent respondents, the opinion poll said. 

The opinion poll conducted between February 4 and 15 identified inflation as a major issue, which affects people the most in their day to day life. 

Corruption has been the second biggest problem, noticed by 34 per cent respondents and 18 per cent feel unemployment a major problem. 

The poll comes as diplomats, politicians and business leaders from Canada, US, China, the UK, , Australia, Spain and Japan are among a throng of visitors who have met Modi in recent times with the assumption that he is the impending PM of India.

A recent meeting between Modi, and Nancy Powell, the US ambassador to India, is the latest indicator that the world is preparing for a change of guard in New Delhi wrote Sreeram Chaulia, a professor and dean at the Jindal School of International Affairs

Powell's desire to learn about Modi's "vision for the country" completes the full circle of international recognition and readiness for his potential reign as India's next head of government, he noted

Modi’s U.S. visa was revoked in 2005 for his alleged complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots. Currently there is also a Facebook petition to keep him out of Canada. Modi  is alleged to have deliberately allowed anti-Muslim riots where more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence.

In addition to the U.S. Germany, Oman and other EU countries have also banned or condemned Modi.

But the Western stance on Modi seems to be taking a new hue, as more and more Indians view him as their new leader.

“As opinion polls and trends leading up to the general elections suggest that Modi is the favourite for the top office of the nation, his interaction with the international community and his foreign policy philosophy take on critical significance for external watchers.”

Chalia wrote that Modi critiques the current government's foreign policy for being "weak where we needed to be strong, insensitive where we needed to be sensitive". To illustrate, he contends that India has adopted a timid stance vis-a-vis China and a weak posture in counterterrorism and cyber warfare. On the other hand, he castigates the present Indian government for failing to demonstrate responsibility in dealing with smaller neighbours and forgetting India's "healing powers" to civilize international relations.

The two words that stand out in Modi's dissatisfaction with the present shape and attitude of India's foreign policy are "watching" and "waiting". He alleges the current government of inertia instead of seizing the initiative to raise the nation's prestige in global forums. If he becomes PM, Modi should think out of the box and empower India's foreign envoys to transcend passive observation and plunge into offering solutions to big global problems of our times.

India's existing foreign policy is largely reactive with no longterm forward planning. If Modi can instil a new sense of ambition to shake up the 'we-are-doingjust-fine' complacency of our bureaucracy and infuse fresh blood into policy planning and doctrine formation to guide India's march in the world for the next decade, it will be a historic contribution, contends Chaulia.

One key area where Modi differs from former occupants of the highest office in India is his emphasis on harnessing the energies of India's 30 states, to whom he wants to entrust the task of forging beneficial foreign relations with at least 30 corresponding partner countries.

In Canada, support for Modi also appears to be gaining momentum, said Peter Sutherland, former Canadian High Commissioner to India and currently President of the Toronto-based Canada-India Business Council (C-IBC), “My anecdotal evidence shows there’s more support for Mr. Modi amongst Canadian business people, more so amongst the Indo-Canadians,” Sutherland told The Toronto Star.

In Canada, members of the South Asian community have also lined up to push for Modi or Gandhi, reported the Globe and Mail.

There are two main Indian political groups active in Canada: Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party (OFBJP) and the Overseas Congress. OFBJP supports the BJP’s Gujarat Chief Minister (Premier) Narendra Modi; Overseas Congress is supporting leadership of 42-year-old Rahul Gandhi, whose father Rajiv Gandhi and grandmother Indira Gandhi were both prime ministers who were assassinated on the job. The current head of the dynasty, Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, recently announced her son’s name would not be put forth for prime minister, although many believe this is just to reduce the controversy around his probable ascendancy for the time being.

About 1,000 Indo-Canadian volunteers are expected go to India to lobby support for the BJP parliamentary candidates during the May election, according to Dr. Azad Kumar Kaushik, Associate Professor of Immunology at Guelph University and Convener of the Toronto Chapter of OFBJP.

“We see the support for Mr. Modi is swelling each day. It’s not an election. It is a people’s movement to save India from decade long miss-governance of the country [by Congress],” he said, according to the paper.

Meanwhile, Leader of the Overseas Congress, Manjit Singh Bhondhi said he expects to lead a group of at least 500 volunteers to India to support Mr. Gandhi’s party.

Congress supporters say Gandhi’s leadership has created a great deal of excitement among young voters. Close to 120 million young people will have the right to vote for the first time and they “hold key to 2014 Lok Sabha [House of Commons] polls,” predicts the Times of India. In the last election in 2009, the Congress Party took 119-million votes and the BJP 78-million.