New DelhiNovember 14, 2025 03:28 PM IST
First published on: Nov 14, 2025 at 01:38 PM IST
Bihar Election Results 2025: For many in the Bihar Congress, the writing was on the wall for several days, but little did anyone realise that the wall itself would collapse and disappear in such a spectacular fashion. There is disbelief and surprise at the scale of the loss for the RJD-led Mahagatbandhan, which was blown away in the NDA wave. The Congress, the second-largest constituent of the alliance, is struggling to touch double digits with leads in 4-5 seats as of 1 pm.
A section of the party leaders, from Delhi to Patna, had a premonition that the party’s main planks, from social justice politics earlier to the recent vote theft campaign, were not working on the ground. But even those in-house critics, many of whom The Indian Express spoke to on Friday, appeared stunned by the results. “It is not adding up,” said one leader who is a staunch critic of the vote theft campaign.
Party leaders, even those in disbelief, identified three reasons for the massive setback.
They say the social justice plank pushed away the party’s upper-class votebank, or whatever was left of it. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and vote theft campaign, pet themes of Gandhi, had no resonance on the ground whatsoever. There was feedback from the ground, but the leadership clearly did not listen. Those close to Rahul Gandhi were so sure about the party’s strategy that they went ahead with it.
And then there was the decision to induct several turncoats from the NDA parties: BJP, JD(U), and LJP. “I can identify at least 10 candidates who had a past association with the NDA. Be it the candidate in Sonbarsha or the ones in Kumhrar, Nautan, Forbesganj, Kuchiakote, or Baldaur. Every party gives tickets to turncoats, but the Congress and Gandhi himself had been fighting the BJP and the RSS tooth and nail. And if you give tickets to those whose social media walls still have photographs with NDA leaders, what is the credibility left?”
Congress leaders in Bihar believe the “paradigm shift” that the party tried to move the party closer towards the backward and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) alienated the upper-caste supporters and did not attract the targeted sections, given that Nitish Kumar continued to be their preferred choice. Kumar’s clear focus on women and EBC voters meant the grand alliance was not able to enlarge its tent, in other words, attract any new section of voters apart from the Muslim-Yadav sections. “M-Y has now become mahila and yuva,” said one Congress leader said.
For women, the Nitish-led government had on August 29, announced the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana, just before the announcement of the polls, promising Rs 2.1 lakh in all for women entrepreneurs in instalments, to help them start their own business. The first installment of Rs 10,000 was deposited in accounts of over 1.21 crore prospective entrepreneurs.
“Rahul came to attend an EBC conference in my district. A little away, there was a village with sizeable Brahmin votes. A crowd of 5,000, including a former vice chancellor of a reputed university, was waiting, hoping Rahul would visit. But he did not. I was told the advice he was given then was that the optics of his visiting a Brahmin village after attending an EBC conference would not be good. It can’t be either or…we have to take everyone along,” said a senior state Congress leader.
And then another reason was the failure of the SIR and the vote theft narratives. There was clear feedback from the ground that the issues were not resonating, after which the leadership nuanced its line and added bread-and-butter issues to the narrative. But the overwhelming narrative still was vote theft. On the eve of polling for the first phase, Gandhi addressed a press conference in Delhi to level allegations of vote theft in the Haryana Assembly elections and even suggested that he would do a similar press conference after the Bihar elections. “It was a signal that we are not confident,” said a leader.
While Rahul and the Congress focused on these issues, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav emphasised more on employment and other day-to-day concerns of people. “There was no one coherent narrative. Apart from one or two rallies, Rahul and Tejashwi did not share the stage. The Congress perhaps was right in believing that Tejashwi’s projection as the CM face would result in a non-Yadav counter-polarisation, but the RJD was not willing to listen. There were many problems. But even then, this result was completely baffling and unexpected,” said a leader.