Five years after falling just 12 seats short of a simple majority in Bihar, the Opposition Mahagathbandhan was at the receiving end of an NDA sweep, with its two biggest constituents, the RJD and the Congress, collapsing spectacularly. While the RJD, the single-largest party, was on course to end up with only 25 seats, down from 75 in 2020, the Congress was struggling to reach double digits.
The RJD and its leader Tejashwi Yadav did not do too well because of multiple factors:
In the run-up to the polls, Tejashwi Yadav raised questions about Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s health, saying the NDA government was in an “achet” (unconscious) state and labelled it “khatara” (rickety). However, the RJD leader who had shaken the NDA with his 10 lakh jobs narrative in 2020 did not have anything fresh to offer in terms of a vision, except the promise of a government job for each family, which did not find many takers.
His Mai Bahin Maan Yojana, promising Rs 2,500 to woman beneficiaries, looked somewhat doable, but the NDA successfully countered it with the Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar
Yojana, in which eligible women entrepreneurs received Rs 10,000 as the first instalment, along with an additional financial support of Rs 2 lakh available within six months based on the performance of the business. Now famous as the “dashazari” scheme, it helped Nitish Kumar rally his core constituency of “mahila” voters and swept away Tejashwi’s narrative.
If the RJD had risen from 22 seats in 2010 to 80 in 2015, it was because of its formidable social combination with the JD(U), with the Congress acting as the glue. In 2020, the RJD was the single-largest party because the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), then undivided, contested the election on its own and ended up damaging the JD(U). And the JD(U)’s loss was automatically the RJD’s gain.
When the RJD went to the polls this time, it had no similar extraneous factors to help it. The party was on its own. The RJD did try to stitch together a coalition to expand its base, but it did not work. The Congress continued to remain the alliance’s weak link, and other allies such as the CPI (M-L) Liberation, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), and the Indian Inclusive Party (IIP) also did not add much to its social combination.
Tejashwi’s biggest asset is that he is the son of Lalu Prasad, but his father’s years in power, remembered as the years of “jungle raj”, are also his liability. The RJD was able to tide over the “jungle raj” narrative in 2015 and 2020 with a good social combination, or when the NDA alliance was weaker, but it was not the case this time.
Several party leaders cited three broad reasons for the Congress’s poor performance. First, they believe that the party’s social justice pitch pushed away whatever was left of its upper-class and upper caste votebank, while it was not enough to bring over a sizable chunk of Extremely Backward Class (EBC) voters over to its side. The EBCs continued to rally behind Nitish Kumar, their preferred choice.
Kumar’s clear focus on women and EBC voters meant the grand alliance was not able to enlarge its tent and attract any new section of voters apart from Muslims and Yadavs (M-Y is the RJD’s core base). “M-Y has now become mahila (women) and yuva (youth),” said a Congress leader, adding that the party does not have a hold on these sections.
“Rahul Gandhi came to attend an EBC conference in my district. A little away, there was a village with sizeable Brahmin votes. A crowd of 5,000, including a former vice chancellor of a reputed university, was waiting, hoping Rahul would visit. But he did not. I was told the advice he was given then was that the optics of his visiting a Brahmin village after attending an EBC conference would not be good. It can’t be either or; we have to take everyone along,” said a senior state Congress leader.
The Leader of Opposition’s yatra against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the “vote chori (vote theft)” narrative also found no resonance with voters. There was feedback from the ground, but the leadership did not listen, said party insiders who were not sure about making the campaign front and centre of the party’s pitch to voters. Congress leaders pointed out that, in contrast, Tejashwi emphasised more on employment and other day-to-day concerns of people. “There was no one coherent narrative. Apart from one or two rallies, Rahul and Tejashwi did not share the stage,” said a leader.
The third reason that many in the party cited was the decision to induct several turncoats from the NDA, along with the usual allegations of irregularities in ticket distribution.
“I can identify at least 10 candidates who had a past association with the NDA. Be it the candidate in Sonbarsha or the ones in Kumhrar, Nautan, Forbesganj, Kuchiakote, or Baldaur. Every party gives tickets to turncoats, but the Congress and Gandhi himself had been fighting the BJP and the RSS tooth and nail. And if you give tickets to those whose social media walls still have photographs with NDA leaders, what is the credibility left?” said a party leader.
