Patna: On 10 November, a day before the second phase of polling in Bihar, Rahul Gandhi said he was “confident”.
Rahul was confident that once the Bihar election results were out, he would be able to present data proving that the BJP had “stolen” votes, in collusion with the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Was this an early indication that Rahul sensed the party was headed for a poor showing in Bihar? Why else would he hint that the party might meet a fate similar to its performance in Haryana?
“I can’t speak for him, but state unit leaders were not very hopeful about our prospects. Still, we did not expect that we wouldn’t even cross the double-digit mark,” said a senior leader of the Congress’s Bihar unit that plunged into an existential crisis Friday.
Already a marginal player in the state’s politics, the Congress has slumped to a low point in Bihar, winning only 6 of the 61 seats it contested, registering an astonishingly low strike rate of 9.8 percent.
Till Friday, the Congress’s worst performance in Bihar was in 2010, when it won four seats. The 2010 election cemented Nitish Kumar’s image as the architect of the state’s turnaround story.
There were voices within the party’s Bihar unit that tried to impress upon the high command that Rahul Gandhi’s decision to make “vote chori” the centrepiece of the campaign needed a rethink, as the slogan was not resonating on the ground.
One All India Congress Committee (AICC) office-bearer, who was in charge in the state, told ThePrint that they had even warned the leadership that the party might not repeat its 2020 performance—when it won 19 of the 70 seats it contested—if there was no course correction.
“We feared that making ‘vote chori’ the lynchpin of the party’s campaign was a risky gambit because there were enough indications that we were faring poorly, even if no one expected a result this bad. Now, the BJP will completely discredit the ‘vote chori’ campaign,” the office-bearer said.
Also Read: A tale of 2 houses & 567 votes: What ThePrint found in Haryana’s Hodal, now under ‘vote chori’ spotlight
Rahul’s Bihar campaign
Despite the voices of caution, Rahul Gandhi pressed ahead with a fortnight-long ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’. That people turned out in large numbers wherever the yatra went had convinced the Congress leadership, including its Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, that it had momentum on its side.
Confident that the yatra had infused life into the party, Allavaru sought to drive a hard bargain with the RJD during seat-sharing talks. He had complete authority to handle the negotiations, as Rahul Gandhi embarked on a trip to South America, after the yatra concluded on 1 September. He returned to campaign, only days before the first phase of polling.
“From the party’s point of view, he did what he was expected to, demanding quality seats to contest from. In 2020, our strike rate was the lowest among the parties in the grand alliance because we were given seats that we could not have won,” said one Congress leader, defending Allavaru.
Not everyone shared that sentiment, though. For instance, after the elections, former Union Minister Shakeel Ahmad, the party’s two-time MP from Madhubani, quit the party. He vented his ire over neither Allavaru nor Rajesh Ram consulting him, the Congress’s state unit president, on any election-related matter.
Even as seat-sharing talks ran into turbulence, the Congress resisted growing pressure from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to endorse Tejashwi Yadav as the Opposition’s chief ministerial candidate, arguing privately that doing so would consolidate non-Yadav OBC voters in the NDA’s favour.
“It was not necessarily a bad call, as the results have shown. Over the years, the upper castes deserted the Congress, so it was wise for the party to try expanding its tent. Efforts were made with this in mind, including a separate manifesto for the EBCs (Economically Backward Classes). Nothing explains a result this bad. I don’t have a ready answer,” a leader close to Allavaru said Friday.
The EBC manifesto, launched by the Congress and the RJD on 24 September in the presence of Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav, pledged a law similar to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The Opposition also promised to increase the reservation for EBCs in Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies from the current 20 percent to 30 percent. This was projected as a strategic move aimed at gaining ground in a constituency seen traditionally as loyal to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
In the end, though, even Muslims, considered a safe Congress vote bank in Bihar, picked the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) over its candidates in as many as two seats, while in another three, it trounced the RJD.
Assembly elections in 2026
The party is now grappling with the question of what comes next, with 2026 on the horizon. Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Kerala will go to the polls in 2026.
In Assam, the Congress is locked in a direct contest with the BJP. In Kerala, its principal rival is the Left. In Tamil Nadu, it is a constituent of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led ruling alliance. In West Bengal, it has contested the last few elections as an ally of the Left, only to lose consistently.
Since Rahul Gandhi took over as the Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition in 2024, the Congress has lost seven of the nine elections held.
It lost Haryana and Maharashtra, states where it was in a direct contest with the BJP, and performed poorly in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim, where it has long been a marginal player. The only places where the INDIA bloc has tasted some success are Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, with the JMM and NC posting victories, aided marginally by the Congress.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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