Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa of the United Progressive Front Alliance (UPFA) was elected as the sixth Executive President of Sri Lanka for a second term by a massive majority of over 1.8 million votes on Tuesday.President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have sent congratulatory messages to Mahinda Rajapaksa on his re-election as President. Scoring a historic victory in an election which was hotly contested, Rajapaksa led in 16 of the 22 electoral districts with 57.88 percent of votes polled. His nearest rival led in six districts mostly in the war ravaged North and the East of the country where the majority population are Tamils.AIR Correspondent reports, Mahinda’s magic did work in the first peace time election and was declared elected for the second term by the Elections Commissioner Dayanana Dissanayke last evening.Despite the rivals claim to have the support of the broadest coalition of groups and political parties, Mahinda Rajapaksa not only retained his vote base especially in the rural areas, but increased his winning margin by 17 per cent .However, the Tamils did vote for the combined opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka , who was also being supported by the Pro – LTTE Tamil National Alliance and managed to get more than 65 per cent of votes in these areas.A beaming Mr. Rajapaksa in his first informal interaction with the media minutes after the Election Commission declared him as the winner of the 2010 election told reporters that during his second stint he would strive for development and reconciliation among the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil and Muslim communities as promised in his election manifesto.