PatnaNovember 29, 2025 07:48 AM IST
First published on: Nov 29, 2025 at 07:48 AM IST
Last month, after being denied the RJD ticket for the Bihar Assembly elections, a party leader from East Champaran’s Madhuban, Madan Prasad Sah, broke down, tore off his clothes and rolled down the road outside 10, Circular Road, the residence of party chief Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi. Protesting against the RJD’s decision, he also predicted that the party would get reduced to just 25 seats.
In the elections, the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the incumbent NDA, getting 35 of the state’s 243 seats as against the latter’s 202 seats. The RJD’s own tally plunged to 25 seats from 75 in 2020, after contesting 143 seats.
While RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has started making efforts to boost the morale of the party’s rank and file, the party has also launched an extensive exercise to review its poll debacle. As the first phase of this exercise, Bihar RJD president Mangani Lal Mandal along with some senior leaders has started meeting candidates who lost the election. Setting the ball rolling, they have met several candidates over the last couple of days, who have lost by less than 20,000 votes.
During these meetings, the RJD leaders and losing candidates have flagged various reasons for the party’s poor show. These include “wrong selection” of several candidates and possible “sabotage” by some party workers.
Another key factor for the defeat has been identified as the Nitish Kumar government’s “Dashazari” or Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana (MMRY) scheme under which 1.51 crore prospective women entrepreneurs were given Rs 10,000 each on the eve of the elections. The entire Opposition alliance seems to be on the same page in attributing their rout to this scheme, among other factors.
RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari told The Indian Express: “One common observation from losing candidates is direct and indirect impact of Rs 10,000 bribe to women voters just too close to election. Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana is nothing but an electoral ploy. We would soon get to know if NDA government gives second instalment of the scheme. Most of our candidates said that Dashazari scheme had a sweeping impact, at times dividing electoral choices of male and female members of several families”.
Tiwari said the RJD has been looking at its setbacks in the party’s erstwhile strongholds of Seemanchal (Katihar, Purnia, Araria and Kishanganj), Shahabad (Bhojpur, Kaimur, Buxar and Rohtas), and parts of Magadh (such as Jehanabad and Arwal). In Saran’s Taraiya seat, RJD nominee Shailendra Pratap Singh lost to the BJP’s Janak Singh with a slim margin.
Tiwari said, “We do suspect some kind of internal and external sabotage in some regions. We have been doing Assembly-wise analysis. And the analysis of some seats tells us how some party workers could also have contributed to our defeat.”
An RJD functionary said several Bhojpuri singers had also released “offensive” songs during the polls, which either projected an aggressive image of the party or portrayed it in “poor light”. “We have issued notices to such singers who had not sought due permission from us for their songs. The party had not assigned them the task of preparing election songs,” he said.
The RJD functionary said the party also got feedback on how the motorcycle ride by some youths with green gamchha also did not go down well with voters among non-Yadav groups. “EBCs feel a sense of alienation from us because of some green gamchha motorcycle show that ended up evoking fear among them, a large section of whom used to be RJD voters,” he said.
The colour of the RJD’s flag is green featuring a lantern. During its poll campaign, the BJP had aggressively targeted the RJD, invoking “jungle raj” of the Lalu Prasad era during the 1990s.
Another RJD leader, requesting anonymity, said: “There have been murmurs in the organisation on several devoted party workers, district presidents and other senior functionaries not getting tickets because of several people cornering them due to their money power and proximity to top RJD leaders.”
The RJD has been also assessing the electoral impact of Asaduddin Owasi’s AIMIM, which won five seats in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region. “It is true that we underestimated the Owasi factor. We faced both religious and caste polarisation in Assembly polls,” said a senior RJD leader.