2024 elections were David vs Goliath fight: Yogendra Yadav

New Delhi, June 7 (PTI) The 2024 elections were a 'David vs Goliath' fight, and David managed to give a bloody nose to Goliath, Swaraj India leader Yogendra Yadav said on Friday.

At a discussion on 'How India Voted' here, Yadav said something "big" happened in this election. "I think something very big happened in the country. And the only name for that is defeat," Yadav said.

"Why do I think so? On the face of it, a ruling party which has had two tenures. Which is going for the third tenure. If they managed to get kind of majority, normally it wouldn't be such a bad outing. All over the world, people going for third term face some difficulties," he said.

"The trouble is with the word normally. This was not a normal election by any stretch of imagination," he said.

He claimed the ruling party spent much more than the opposition, and also accused the Election Commission of a "disgraceful conduct".

"Here is an election where the ruling party outspent the opposition by one isto 10 on the formal white money things, if social media spending is anything to go by. But I'm sure if I say one isto 100, not many people would disagree with what happened," he said.

"The Election Commission of India was utterly, utterly disgraceful in its conduct. So, this is not a fair contest. This is not a normal election. This is truly a David versus Goliath kind of a contest. And in David versus Goliath contest, David has managed to give a punch, a proper bloody nose to Goliath," he said.

He also claimed the media brazenly supported the ruling party.

Yadav, who was a national convener of the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, which supported the INDIA bloc, said the elections this time were back to issues.

"Last two elections, the entire country was on an abnormal high, for different reasons. That abnormal high came back to normalcy. And all the normal things, which matter in elections, should matter in elections, started mattering. In some cases, it worked for the BJP, because the BJP had answers to those questions. In most cases, it worked against the BJP," he said.

He said there was specific resentment among some groups, like farmers, Dalits and Muslims.

"There was specific resentment of three or four groups. Farmers, because of the conditions that farmers are in, and what has happened to them, and the anger which was stoked by the farmers' agitation. Dalits... Some accusations tend to stick on some kind of people. With the BJP, when you say anti-Constitution, you don't have to give too much evidence. It sticks," he said .

"The specific resentment among Muslims, because they felt they were being reduced to second-rate citizenship. And specific resentment among sections of society who felt Tanashahi (autocracy) was an issue," he added.

The BJP won 240 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, coming down from its earlier tally of 303 it won the last time. The Congress meanwhile won 99 seats.

Overall the NDA got 293 seats, while the INDIA bloc won 234 seats. PTI AO MNK MNK