NDA's Bihar encore: Task cut out for RJD; Cong stares at existential crisis

Congress posted one of its weakest-ever results in Bihar, prompting PM Modi to forecast a split, while RJD too failed to widen its caste coalition despite a strong vote share and young-voter outreach

On Friday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on social media his tributes to India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on his birth anniversary, and by evening predicted that the Congress is headed for a split.

 

In the 2025 Bihar Assembly polls, the Congress won six seats of the 61 it contested in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and others, with an 8.73 per cent vote share — its second-worst performance in the state since 1951. In the 2010 Bihar Assembly polls, the Congress fielded candidates on all 243 seats, winning just four with an 8.37 per cent vote share.

 

How did Congress position itself in the Bihar campaign?

 

In the run-up to the Bihar Assembly polls, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi led a ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’, accusing the Election Commission of “vote theft”. A day before polling for the first phase on November 6, Gandhi urged ‘Gen Z’ to “restore democracy”. As much as 60 per cent of Bihar’s population is below 29 years of age. But as Modi pointed out in his victory speech at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headquarters, the youth rejected the Congress’ allegations and voted for “purification” of electoral rolls. 

 

The Congress’ tally in 2025 was only slightly better than fringe parties such as Asaduddin Owaisi's AIMIM and Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), both of which bagged five seats each. AIMIM posted on X that if not for Congress candidates eating into its vote share, it could have won as many as 15 seats.

 

What explains Congress’ long-term decline in Bihar?

 

The Congress was a force in Bihar until 1990. It won 196 of the total 324 seats of undivided Bihar in 1985 to form the government, but dropped to 71 seats in 1990 as the Janata Dal-led backward-class assertion, with Lalu Prasad as its leading light, displaced it from power.

 

In the run-up to the 2025 polls, the Congress tried to reinvent itself by replacing its upper-caste party chief with a Dalit, Rajesh Ram, who eventually lost from Kutumba. Its demand for a caste census lost resonance when the Centre announced that the 2026 Census will enumerate caste. Bihar under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, when he headed the grand alliance government, had conducted a caste survey in 2023.

 

The Congress leadership was unwilling to announce RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav as the alliance’s chief ministerial face, but succumbed to pressure when Yadav fielded candidates against its allies. The Congress will need to perform better in the next round of Assembly elections due in April–May, where it is a principal player at least in Assam and Kerala, and an ally of the ruling party in Tamil Nadu. It remains a fringe player in West Bengal.

 

What did the PM say about the Congress and the RJD?

 

Addressing party workers at the BJP headquarters, the PM said the Congress has become “Muslimleegi Maowadi Congress”, or “MMC”, and will witness a big split soon. In a swipe at the top Congress leadership, he said some “naamdars” within the party are drowning everyone with them. He said the Congress has no positive vision for the country and he had warned its allies that the party is a parasite and a liability for them.

 

But not just the Congress, the PM also prophesied the end of the line for the RJD. Alluding to the RJD’s Muslim–Yadav (M-Y) support base, Modi said that although some parties had formulated an “M-Y formula”, today’s victory had given a new “positive M-Y”, that is, the “Mahila and Youth” formula. Modi said “jungle raj” and “katta raj” would never return to haunt Bihar.

 

How did the RJD fare in the 2025 polls?

 

Despite securing the best vote share among all parties, the results yet again underlined the RJD’s failure to stitch a caste coalition beyond its Muslim–Yadav support base. The RJD had won or was leading in only 25 seats at the time of filing this report, only slightly better than its worst-ever performance of 22 seats in the 2010 Assembly polls. However, unlike 2010, when it secured an 18.84 per cent vote share, the RJD bagged a respectable 23 per cent vote share in the 2025 polls.

 

In the 2020 Assembly polls, RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav had managed to rally the youth, with his party winning 75 of the 144 seats it contested with a 23.11 per cent vote share. Yadav’s efforts at appealing to the youth by promising a government job to each of the 27.6 million households in Bihar were criticised even by allies as a “non-serious” plank.

 

It also failed to learn from the example of the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party, which in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls expanded its caste coalition by fielding barely half a dozen Yadav candidates. With 20 years out of power, and the next big election four years away, it remains to be seen if the RJD scion has the gumption to revive his party.