PATNA: For the Opposition, Bihar Assembly election results turned out to be nothing less than a disaster. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) of Tejashwi Yadav, which had emerged as the single-largest party in 2020, was swept away by the NDA wave on Friday, losing more than half its seats and winning just 25 seats.
The Congress with six seats was not even in the reckoning and came out as the Mahagathbandhan’s weakest link. Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party, touted by some as a possible disruptor, failed to make any electoral dent. Most of its candidates are likely to forfeit their deposits. Once a celebrated strategist for several political parties, his leadership in Bihar proved to be a major setback.
Though the Exit polls had predicted NDA victory, the extent of the sweep, with both BJP and JD(U) registering massive gains, exceeded most projections. With the BJP outperforming its ally Janata Dal (U), the next big question remains on its emergence as a more assertive partner.
For the NDA whose star campaigners, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, repeatedly resurrected the memories of the ‘jungle raj’ during RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav’s term came to haunt him and his family, associated with the fodder scam cases and the land-for-jobs scandal.
PM Modi harped upon the “jungle raj ka yuvraj’’ narrative while referring to Tejashwi to attack the RJD over lawlessness as well as dynastic politics.
Tejashwi Yadav, who was named as the chief ministerial candidate of the opposition INDIA bloc, made promises like 200 free units of power. Nitish Kumar, once a vocal critic of “freebies”, did a volte face and announced 125 units of free power every month which helped offset the public anger that was building up in the wake of “prepaid meters”, which were being blamed for inflated bills.
Tejashwi’s bid to win over women through a ‘Mai Bahin Samman Yojana’ was stymied through ‘Mukhymantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana’, under which Rs 10,000 was transferred into the accounts of each of over one crore women.
The young RJD leader was left with no option but to recoil in horror, declaring that he would make “no new announcements till model code of conduct came into force”, making it impossible for the government to “copy” any of his promises.
By the time polls were announced, the opposition seemed to have run short of fresh ideas. Tejashwi was not able to offer anything new except the promise of “government job to at least one member of every family”, which, even in the eyes of die-hard RJD supporters, was too good to be true.
Attempts to chip away at the NDA’s Extremely Backward Classes support base, through promises like a law against atrocities on the lines of SC/ST Act, were never followed through, perhaps out of fear that it would enrage the upper castes and the powerful OBCs.
For the NDA whose star campaigners, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, repeatedly resurrected the memories of the ‘jungle raj’ during RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav’s term came to haunt him and his family, associated with the fodder scam cases and the land-for-jobs scandal.
Modi urged the women to “keep jungle raj at bay”, calling them the “worst victims” of the lawlessness that allegedly characterised the period while RJD was in power.
Women voters, who have consistently backed Kumar for imposing prohibition despite its challenges, were also unimpressed by Tejashwi Yadav’s stance on diluting the liquor ban by exempting toddy, though he stopped short of declaring that “sharaab bandi” would be scrapped altogether, like Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor, who has ended up biting dust.
For the struggling Congress, the results came as a rude shock as it posted its second worst performance in Bihar’s electoral history managing to win only six of the over 50 seats it contested and losing deposits in most seats as its ‘vote chori’ pitch failed to make any impact on the ground.
The scale of the Congress’ debacle was such that the party could manage to just finish ahead of Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), which bagged five seats each.
The Congress tally was only better than the four seats it won in 2010, getting a vote share of only 8.75 per cent compared to the 8.17 per cent 15 years ago.
The party now has multiple challenges - keeping its flock together, curbing voices of dissent within besides reclaiming lost ground.
The results mirrored a lingering pattern of lacklustre performances by the Congress which dominated Bihar for decades, winning 100-plus seats till 1985. In 1977, the Congress won 57 seats in the wake of the Emergency.
Starting with 239 seats with a 41.38 per cent vote share in 1952, the grand old party’s graph in Bihar has been on the decline ever since.
The dominant player in Bihar’s politics went down from 196 seats in 1985 to 71 in 1990 and further down to 29 and 23 in 1995 and 2000, only to touch the single-digit mark in 2005.
The rout of the Congress was so complete that its state president Rajesh Kumar lost to NDA’s HAM candidate Lalan Ram in Kutumba.
Party leader Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, a consistent anti-Election Commission and SIR narrative, his appeals to ‘Gen Z’ to “restore democracy” had no takers.
In Bihar, 40 per cent of the population is below the age of 18 and 23 per cent is between 18 and 29 years. Among other caste, community and social bases too, the Congress failed to emerge as a party of choice.
The caste census cry that the Opposition had been giving out for sometime now was a non-issue in this poll after the NDA government announced inclusion of caste in the next census.
Intra-opposition coalition contradictions marked by RJD, Congress and Left fighting each other in at least eight seats, lack of projection of unity, absence of a credible narrative that could appeal to the voters contributed to Congress’ decline in the state.
For a few years now, the Congress has been losing to the BJP in direct fights (Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana) and has remained at best a peripheral or smallest player in coalitions elsewhere, such as in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and now Bihar.
On the other hand, what worked for the NDA was the pro-incumbency with women voters and the youth and extremely backward classes favouring it strongly, in order to counter the opposition’s Muslim-Yadav combine factor.
In 2026, the Congress will face an emboldened BJP in a direct fight in Assam and a formidable rival in the CPI-M ruled Kerala. In West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, however, the Congress remains a fringe player.