AHMEDABAD, India -- The hardline Hindu Nationalist Chief Minister of India's riot-hit Gujarat State, Narendra Modi, won his seat in the State Assembly election, a state election official said Sunday.

Modi trounced his nearest rival Yatin Oza of the main opposition congress by a 75,000-vote margin in Maninagar, where there were more than 300,000 ballots cast, the official told AFP.

Modi, 52, a controversial hardliner who inspires both admiration and hatred, took over as chief minister in the wealthy western state last year.

He was accused this year of turning a blind eye to sectarian rioting in the state that killed as many as 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

The violence was sparked in February after a train carrying Hindu activists was torched by a mob, believed to be Muslim, killing 58.

Shortly afterwards Modi dissolved the State Assembly and called elections. Critics said he was relying on a wave of Hindu Nationalist sentiment to carry the BJP, which has been faltering at the local level, back into power.

He played the hardline BJP card to the hilt, going against Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's directive that party leaders refrain from exploiting the raw religious faultlines in the state exposed by the riots.

After an official announcement of Modi's reelection, BJP Party workers sent a wave of text messages to mobile phones exulting that "A new messiah is born for a new dynamic India. Modi is here."

The BJP led the rest of the 182-member Assembly, according to early results released Sunday from Thursday's vote.

In the first official declared results, the BJP had won 24 seats, while the opposition Congress Party had nine seats and two had gone to other parties.

The Gujarat state information bureau said BJP was leading in 90 and the congress was ahead in 55 seats.

Voting for the State Assembly was held under tight security as 61.7 percent of Gujarat's 33 million eligible voters cast their ballots. More than ten percent are Muslim.

The BJP won 117 seats in the 1998 Gujarat election to Congress's 53.