Patna: On November 10, a day earlier than the second part of polling in Bihar, Rahul Gandhi stated he was “assured”.
Rahul was assured that when the Bihar election outcomes have been in, he would be capable of current information to show that the Bharatiya Janata Get together colluded with the Election Fee of India (ECI) to “steal” votes.
Was this an early signal that Rahul felt the social gathering was headed for a stoop in Bihar? Why else did he trace that the social gathering may undergo an analogous destiny to its efficiency in Haryana?
“I can’t communicate for him, however the state unit leaders weren’t very hopeful about our prospects. Nonetheless, they didn’t count on us to not cross double-digit ranges,” stated a senior chief of the Congress’ Bihar unit, which was in an existential disaster on Friday.
Already a marginal participant in state politics, the Congress languished to its lowest place in Bihar, profitable solely six of the 61 seats it contested and recording an astonishingly low strike fee of 9.8 per cent.
Till Friday, the Congress’ worst efficiency in Bihar was in 2010, when it gained 4 seats. The 2010 elections established Nitish Kumar’s picture because the architect of the state’s reconstruction story.
There have been voices throughout the social gathering’s Bihar unit attempting to impress upon the commander-in-chief that Rahul Gandhi’s determination to make the ‘vote choli’ the centerpiece of the marketing campaign was not resonating on the bottom and wanted to be reconsidered.
One of many All India Congress Committee (AICC) officers in cost within the state instructed ThePrint that the social gathering had even warned the management that and not using a course correction, the social gathering won’t repeat its efficiency in 2020, when it gained 19 of the 70 seats it contested.
“Though nobody anticipated the end result to be this dangerous, there have been sufficient indicators that we have been doing poorly and we feared that making ‘vote choli’ the linchpin of the social gathering’s election marketing campaign was a dangerous gamble. This may fully discredit the ‘vote choli’ marketing campaign within the Bharatiya Janata Get together,” the social gathering chief stated.
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Rahul’s Bihar marketing campaign
Regardless of the voices of alarm, Rahul Gandhi went forward together with his two-week-long ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’. The massive turnout of individuals all over the place the yatra went satisfied the Congress management, together with Bihar chief Krishna Araval, that the yatra had momentum on its aspect.
Believing that the yatra had injected vigor into the social gathering, Araval sought to push for powerful negotiations with the RJD on seat-sharing talks. Since Rahul Gandhi launched into a visit to South America after the Yatra was concluded on September 1, he had full authority to deal with the negotiations. He returned to campaigning simply days earlier than the primary part of voting.
“From the social gathering’s standpoint, he did what was anticipated of him and demanded high quality contested seats. In 2020, our strike fee was the bottom among the many Grand Alliance events as a result of we got seats that we didn’t get,” a Congress chief stated in protection of Araval.
Nevertheless, not everybody shared that sentiment. For instance, after the elections, former federal minister Shakeel Ahmad, who hails from Madhubani and served because the social gathering’s MP twice, left the social gathering. He vented his anger that neither Araval nor Rajesh Ram consulted him, the Congress state unit president, on election-related points.
Whilst seat-sharing talks fell into disarray, the Congress resisted rising stress from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to help Tejashwi Yadav because the opposition chief ministerial candidate, privately claiming that doing so would solidify non-Yadav OBC voters in favor of the NDA.
“It was not essentially a nasty determination, because the outcomes present. Through the years, there was an exodus of higher castes from the Congress, so it was smart for the social gathering to attempt to increase its tent. Efforts have been made retaining this in thoughts, together with a separate manifesto for the EBC (Economically Backward Lessons). There is no such thing as a rationalization for such a nasty end result. I’ve no fast solutions,” a frontrunner near Mr. Araval stated on Friday.
The EBC manifesto, launched by the Congress and RJD within the presence of Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav on September 24, promised to enact a legislation just like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The Opposition additionally promised to extend reservation for EBCs in panchayats and concrete native our bodies to 30 per cent from the present 20 per cent. This was predicted as a strategic transfer geared toward establishing itself in a constituency historically seen as loyal to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) social gathering.
However ultimately, even the Muslims in Bihar, which was thought-about a secure polling place for the Congress, selected the All India Majlis-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) over the candidates in as much as two seats, and the RJD in three extra seats.
2026 parliamentary elections
The social gathering is now grappling with the query of what occurs subsequent, with 2026 simply across the nook. Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala are scheduled to go to polls in 2026.
In Assam, the Congress is locked in a direct confrontation with the Bharatiya Janata Get together. The principle rivals in Kerala are the Left. In Tamil Nadu, the state is a part of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led ruling coalition. In West Bengal, it has fought as an ally of the Left in the previous couple of elections, however has continued to lose.
Since Rahul Gandhi took over as chief of the opposition in 2024, the Congress has misplaced seven of the 9 elections held.
It misplaced Haryana and Maharashtra, which have been in direct battle with the Bharatiya Janata Get together, and carried out poorly in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim, states that had been at a drawback for a few years. The one locations the place the Indian bloc has had any success are in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the place the JMM and NC gained with a bit help from the Congress.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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