 "Nitish Kumar, Nitish, Samrat Choudhary")
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA)’s landslide win in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections left the Opposition INDIA bloc parties grappling for answers. Some of its constituents alleged that the win was accomplished with the help of the Election Commission (EC)’s role, while others indulged in recriminations against each other.
Sources in the Election Commission pointed out that special intensive revision, or SIR, of Bihar’s electoral rolls was carried out with “zero appeals” against it, there were “zero repolls”, and the state witnessed the highest polling percentage since 1951. “It is the best ever performance by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the EC in any elections so far,” an EC official said.
Sources also pointed out that the NDA had secured a bigger win in 2010 (during the tenure of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre), with the Janata Dal (United) winning 115 seats and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagging 91 seats. The NDA won 206 of the total 243 seats in 2010. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) had then won a mere 22 seats of the 168 it contested, and its then ally, Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party won three of the 75 seats it contested.
During his speech at the BJP headquarters, Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the EC for conducting the Bihar Assembly polls peacefully. He said the results vindicated that the youth of the country supports “purification” of electoral rolls.
In his speech, the PM predicted a falling out between the INDIA bloc allies RJD and Congress. As the results trickled in, with the RJD and Congress performing abysmally, leaders within the Congress posted on social media that the RJD should take the blame for the loss. In the 2020 Assembly polls, when a mere 13,000 votes separated the NDA and Mahagathbandhan, the RJD had emerged as the single-largest party. Several of the Congress’ allies had then blamed the loss on it since it could win only 19 of the 70 seats it contested.
The SIR conducted by the EC had found that 2.2 million were deceased, 3.6 million having permanently shifted from Bihar, and 700,000 duplicate voters. The EC’s SIR resulted in the deletion of a total of 6.5 million votes. Sources in the EC asked whether the RJD and Congress were attributing their success in the past on “impure” electoral rolls.
The Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) accused both the RJD and Congress for the loss. Its Rajya Sabha member Mahua Maji said that the “last-minute discrimination” against her party during the seat-sharing arrangement among the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ constituents in Bihar reflected in the “dismal show” of the Opposition bloc. She said there has been a “lacuna in fulfilling Mahagathbandhan dharma” during the seat-sharing arrangement.
The JMM, which is the ruling party in Jharkhand, had, on October 20, announced that it would not contest the assembly elections in neighbouring Bihar, claiming that the decision was taken in the wake of a “political conspiracy” by its allies, such as the RJD and Congress. “I think the Congress could not field suitable candidates,” she said.
Nationalist Congress Party (SP) leader Supriya Sule said the "massive one-sided mandate" in Bihar came as a surprise to everyone, including the winning NDA, but the victory belongs to incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
“Many surveys indicated that the Bihar election would be tough. Journalists covering the polls and several campaign workers told me there is tremendous respect and love for Nitish Kumar among the people of Bihar,” she said.
On questions regarding electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voters' lists, Sule said she had repeatedly raised issues about several cases in her own Baramati Lok Sabha constituency. “The media has also presented the actual situation before the people. Even allies sharing power with the BJP have raised questions over vote theft,” she said.
Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal alleged that the NDA’s impressive performance in the Bihar assembly elections was due to “malpractices”, and blamed the EC.
