Bihar elections: Congress’ electoral slide and its failed promise of course correction

New Delhi: Every time Congress loses an election, it promises course correction and a quick comeback. But the leadership has every time failed to keep its word.

The slide started in 2014 with the humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections, and there seems to be no end to that. Minus occasional wins here and there, the grand old party of Indian politics has been at the receiving end in the majority of states. The only ray of hope came in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections when it performed beyond everyone’s expectations.

Since 2014, the leadership hasn’t taken any concrete steps to resurrect the party. There is still no roadmap for the party’s revival and a blueprint on how to reconnect with the masses.

The only statement that comes after every defeat is that the party leadership will review the poll performance and formulate corrective steps.

The one key takeaway from the Bihar election results is that the Congress needs to stop riding piggyback on regional parties and try to fight polls alone, keeping in mind its strengths and weaknesses.

While the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) will blame the grand old party for this crushing defeat, the Congress will try to put the onus on Tejashwi Yadav, who was the declared chief ministerial face of the INDIA grouping. This happened even in 2020 when the RJD accused the Congress of being the weakest link in the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance), and because of whom the Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to win the assembly elections.

The INDIA alliance constituents will obviously attribute the landslide victory of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rozgar Yojana, a Rs 7500-crore direct benefit transfer initiative offering Rs 10,000 each to 1.2 crore women to promote self-employment in Bihar.

But they too had made ‘vote chori (vote theft)’ their main campaign plank and promised jobs and other sops to the voters, for which there were hardly any takers. In the end, even Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote adhikar yatra’ failed to rally voters in favour of the mahagathbandhan despite a visibly good response to it on the ground.

Another important factor was the cohesiveness among the NDA allies in campaigning and election management. The grand alliance side lacked such coordination to the extent that both the RJD and the Congress fought friendly battles in many constituencies. Obviously, this didn’t go down well with their voters and supporters.

No doubt, there is no quick fix to such problems, but the fact that the Congress leadership, especially Rahul Gandhi, has failed to walk the talk all these years gives little hope to the disillusioned party workers who would be keenly watching the future moves.