Cong's 2nd-worst show, no SIRprise despite roll rant

The Congress collapse in Bihar, now poised to be its second-worst performance since 1952, underscores a structural crisis that no longer lends itself to easy explanations or electoral alibis. This is not a routine defeat, it is the culmination of decades of organisational decay, shrinking social coalitions and an absence of political imagination.

The party’s decision to frame the poll campaign around “vote theft” and alleged collusion between the ruling alliance and the election authorities proved to be a miscalculation that neither mobilised new voters nor protected its eroding base.

That the Congress is blaming the Election Commission is hardly surprising. Through the campaign, senior leaders, including LoP Rahul Gandhi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka Gandhi, Ashok Gehlot among others, repeatedly alleged bogus voting, tampered machines and administrative bias. But when the dust settled, voters did not buy the narrative.

This disconnect was decisive. National-level accusations simply did not cut through in a state where voting behaviour is shaped by immediate economic concerns and social stability rather than broad constitutional anxieties. Bihar recorded a historic 67.13 per cent turnout, the highest since 1951, with women voters registering an extraordinary 71.6 per cent participation against 62.8 per cent for men. Yet, this unprecedented mobilisation did not yield gains for the Congress or its alliance. Instead, it underlined a political shift that neither grievance nor nostalgia could arrest.

The Mahagathbandhan’s fragility was most evident on the ground. Despite repeated rounds of high-level negotiations, the coalition failed to prevent “friendly fights” in 11 constituencies, an especially damaging lapse in a state where margins are notoriously slim. The Congress and the RJD clashed in five seats, the Congress and the CPM in four, and the RJD and the VIP in two. These disagreements weakened the alliance even before the polling began, signalling disunity to undecided voters and confusing the cadres responsible for the last-mile mobilisation.

The booth-level mobilisation, long the backbone of competitive politics in Bihar, became another point of failure. The Mahagathbandhan struggled to match the NDA’s disciplined and data-driven ground operation. Its messaging lacked a coherent view: the RJD emphasised caste narratives and social justice, the Congress stressed electoral integrity and institutional concerns and the Left focused on labour issues and economic distress. Conflicting personalities, parallel roadshows and disjointed slogans prevented the alliance from projecting a unified alternative. What emerged instead was a fragmented coalition stretched across ideological poles but lacking strategic synthesis.

The Mahagathbandhan, comprising the RJD, Congress, CPM and VIP, entered the contest with a wide ideological spectrum but no single narrative. The NDA, by contrast, ran a synchronised, tightly scripted campaign anchored in stability, governance and welfare delivery, backed by booth management and an expansive women voter coalition built over two decades. This clarity of message and machinery translated directly into seats.

For the Congress, the verdict is not merely electoral, it is historical. A party that once defined Bihar’s political architecture, sweeping 239 seats in the first Assembly election of 1952, is now battling for relevance in a landscape reconfigured by regional parties, backward-caste mobilisation and development-linked politics. The decline that began in the late 1960s, accelerated after 1990 and hardened through the 2000s, has now settled into a structural crisis.