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New Delhi, November 14 (IANS) Congress has faced a major defeat in the Bihar Assembly elections and has been able to gain lead in only four seats. The highlight of the RJD-Congress campaign was party MP Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote theft’ pitch. His extensive tour across the state was aimed at influencing 116 assembly seats.
However, on the day of results, the Congress was found to be ahead on only four of the targeted 116 seats with a strike rate of less than 2 per cent. Rahul Gandhi’s Bihar campaign focused on ‘vote theft’. His journey across Bihar was in a position to impact half the seats.
India Bloc, known as the Grand Alliance in Bihar, had an aggressive campaign centered around Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote theft’ allegations. Nevertheless, it appears that the pitch to the voters has weakened, as trends indicate a record victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.
For Congress, the trends are particularly worrying. The party not only performed poorly on the seats it contested, but also failed to contribute meaningfully to the alliance’s numbers, taking the lead on only four of the 61 seats it contested.
Despite repeatedly leveling allegations against the Center and the Election Commission such as ‘voter theft’ and campaigning around the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) campaign and the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, the Congress struggled to gain ground.
In the last press conference on ‘vote theft’ on November 6, Rahul Gandhi had claimed to show proof of a Brazilian model being registered in the voter list of Haryana 22 times under different names, including Seema and Sweety.
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote theft’ pitch as well as Congress’ high-energy social media campaign were expected to energize workers and strengthen the anti-incumbency wave, but did not get the momentum the party had hoped for.
Promising a ‘hydrogen bomb’ of evidence but never quite delivering it, Rahul Gandhi held three press conferences where he presented alleged evidence of how the ECI was enabling vote theft, mass deletion of votes and data manipulation.
On 6 November, Rahul Gandhi again reiterated his “vote theft” allegation while appealing to “Gen Z brothers and sisters” to decide the future of Bihar. But this strategy also failed to impress voters.
In the 2020 elections, the Congress won 27 out of 70 seats with a conversion rate of 38 percent. However, this time its performance has declined even further.
Congress, once the dominant force in the political scene of Bihar, has gradually lost its grip on the state. In 2025, it contested the elections in alliance with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as the junior partner. The 2025 Bihar election results are one of the weakest performances of the party.
Congress was once one of the top three political parties in Bihar, especially before the bifurcation of the state in 2000. In the 1985 elections, the Congress won a clear majority with 196 seats, leading to Chandrashekhar Singh becoming the Chief Minister.
In the 1990 elections, Congress emerged as the second largest party with 71 seats, which is considered to be its last strong performance. The last phase of major leadership of the party came under the leadership of Jagannath Mishra, who served as Chief Minister in 1990.
However, the party’s influence declined rapidly thereafter. In the 1995 elections, its numbers fell sharply to 29 seats, marking the beginning of a long-term decline.
In 2000, Bihar was divided to form the new state Jharkhand. This dramatically reshaped the political landscape of Bihar, leading to the rise of regional parties like Janata Dal (United) and RJD. In the 2000 assembly elections held before partition, Congress stood fourth with 23 seats.
In 2005, two assembly elections were held in Bihar due to a hung mandate in February. Fresh elections were held in October–November, where the Congress secured only 6.1 percent vote share, indicative of its shrinking base.
The Congress saw a brief recovery in subsequent years, gaining 27 seats in 2015 and maintaining a similar presence in subsequent elections, but the 2025 results mark one of the party’s biggest declines in Bihar.
–IANS
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