Congress: A Spectacular Failure in Bihar

While these trends are consistent with the party’s performance in Bihar over the past quarter century, what makes the party’s campaign—spearheaded by Rahul Gandhi—a spectacular failure is the gap between the stridency of the voter adhikar yatra and the actual results. The more ferocious the claims of fraud and unfairness, the greater the degree of rejection by the electorate.

In the event, the party refused to accept the message with grace and its spokespersons continued to blame the Election Commission of India (ECI) for vote theft. This claim has found no credence in all the states where it has been made.

The problem with the yatra, which started on 17^th August and ended on 1^st September, travelling across 20 districts in Bihar, was that its message was at odds with what voters in Bihar wanted to hear. Instead of talking about jobs, livelihoods and aspirations, the focus was vote theft, Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and saving the Constitution of India. These themes did not endear the Congress to the voters.

The Congress has been out of power in Bihar since 1990. In the 35 year since then, it has bled away its vote share even as it is no longer obvious who its voters are. In Bihar, with its social fragmentation along caste lines, each major caste group—SC, ST, OBC, EBC, MBC—has a political champion. In this crowded field, the Congress has been jostled out of the arena. It has survived on the mercy of bigger coalition partners in the state. In the last two elections, 2020 and now in 2025, it has managed to prise away far more seats that it could win. The result? It has dragged down the coalition under the weight of its unrealistic goals.

Apart from its inability to understand the reasons behind its long-term decline in the state, the Congress’ tactical management during elections was woefully inadequate. It squabbled with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a party much bigger in terms of vote share and the seats it had won in 2020. Until almost the middle of the campaign it refused to agree that RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav should be the chief ministerial face of the mahagathbandhan coalition. In India’s plebiscitary politics, this matters a lot. Voters tend to identify a party or a coalition with its face. This was the second major messaging mistake by the Congress. Not only did this lead to friction with the RJD, it also did not allow the coalition to expand its reach.

It is unlikely that the Congress will return to Bihar’s politics in any meaningful way any time soon. The first step in that direction is to understand the reasons for its continuing failure. There are no signs that the party is willing to do that.