Bihar Election Fallout: What ails the Congress Party?
The Indian National Congress, a dominant political force in Bihar before the turn of millennium, has experienced a sharp and sustained decline in the state’s electoral landscape over the last two decades. It was the reflection of its decreased relevance that the party that could secure only 27 seats in the 2015 Assembly elections and 19 seats during 2020 Assembly elections, ended up in winning only 6 seats in the current election. One can see that the party’s decline has further accelerated in 2025. With a mere vote share of 8.71%, it has literally no presence in the state.
As a key constituent of Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) alongside the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress’s abysmal showing is not just a failure for the party itself but a major detriment to the alliance’s overall prospects. The party bungled from the very beginning. Despite its lack of significant presence or robust organisational base on the ground, it demanded its share of seats far exceeding its actual capacity to win. Not only it approached the election in its usual casual manner, postponing the seat-sharing arrangement to the last moment but also kept on dilly dallying about accepting RJD’s claim to be the senior partner in the alliance and accepting Tejasvi Yadav’s candidature as the the alliance’s CM candidate. Its lackluster campaign for the victory of alliance and absence of the local cadre at the ground level as well as senior national leaders during campaign was another problem. Further, Instead of addressing pressing issues such as unemployment, economic stagnation, distress migration, and regional inequalities—issues central to Bihar’s public consciousness—the party leaned heavily on Rahul Gandhi’s campaign around “vote chori.” The narrative failed to resonate beyond a limited audience because it neither reflected the lived realities of voters nor offered an affirmative political programme. Congress did not generate a debate on core developmental concerns, nor did it succeed in presenting itself as a viable substitute to the ruling dispensation.
Bihar election is not an exception. Election after election, this seems to be the pattern for the Congress party. It is slow in forming alliances, finalising candidates and setting its political agenda. Party seems to be having a disconnect not only with the people, but also with the strategies of mobilisation. Living in its past when it did not face any real competition, it operates with a structural inertia. One can clearly see that it has not come to the grips of electoral realities that are defined by the BJP’s aggressive electoral strategies. Since 2014, the BJP has institutionalised a culture of uninterrupted electoral mobilisation. For the party and its leadership, politics is a round-the-clock enterprise. Its organisational networks, media strategies, ideological messaging and grassroots presence are permanently activated. Prime Minister Modi himself embodies this perpetual campaign mode. Against this level of intensity, the Congress appears not only reactive but also lethargic. It becomes activated primarily during election period. However, even during this period, it takes time to warm up. In the post-election period, the party goes back into its shell and stays dormant till the next election. In most of the situations, the party shies away from the sustained grassroots work. Although in last few years, the party has experimented with a new mobilisation strategy through its Bharat Jodo Yatra. However, even this is a very episodic exercise. The enthusiasm generated during this massive mobilisation is allowed to be cooled off and is not systematically followed with subsequent plans of mobilisation. In the absence of continuous and everyday engagement , the party fails in leaving deep political impressions at the ground level.
Besides the process of mobilisation, there are major flaws in the organisational structure of the Congress which inhibits the process of linking the party leadership with the ground realities. The structural centralisation of the party and the continued hold of the family on decision making within the party - are two such flaws. The party continues to operate as a top-down formation, where decisions flow downward from a distant top. With no process of carrying the feedback from below towards the leadership sitting at the top, the leadership remains disconnected with the lived local realities. In this process of centralisation, everything gets to be decided at the level of top leadership. It is at this level that electoral strategy is decided, the narrative is built, the candidates are selected and so on. With not much involvement of the ground level workers and cadre in the process, there remains a big gap of communication. It is the consequence of this top-down structure that the energies generated at the top fail to be transmitted to the ground level workers.
Over time, this centralisation has generated a widening gap between the party and the people - mainly due to the lack of organically evolved local leaders. The Congress has stopped producing leaders shaped by local struggles and in most cases they enjoy their position due to their sheer loyalty to the top leadership. In the absence of organic leadership evolved at the local levels, the party in most of the states remains crisis-ridden.
Apart from the centralised structure of Congress, it is the dependence of the party on a single family that inhibits its political growth. With the family forming the core of the organisational structure of the party, there is not much space either for internal competition within the party or for evolution of alternative leadership. Over the period, there has evolved a culture within the party that is based on rewarding loyalty (to the family). It is therefore not surprising that there are a number of senior leaders who could have fruitfully contributed to the strength of party, feel alienated and remain at the margins of the party.
The family-centric model might once have offered stability to the party, but in the present situation, it seems to have become a liability. In the new political situation of India which is defined by hyper-competitiveness, this model of leadership not merely inhibits the growth of the party, but limits its political imagination.
One of the most striking weaknesses of the Congress today is its inability to craft a compelling and coherent political narrative. Any national party must articulate a persuasive alternative vision of governance and a credible roadmap for the country’s future. This need becomes even more urgent in the present context, where the ruling BJP has excelled in narrative construction. Through a highly effective use of communication tools and sustained ideological messaging, the BJP has successfully reshaped the contours of contemporary Indian politics. The Congress, has failed to mount a forceful response. Instead of proactively advancing its own political discourse, it has been pushed into a largely reactive posture. Much of its energy is spent critiquing the BJP—and particularly Prime Minister Modi—rather than setting the terms of the debate. In doing so, the party has inadvertently ceded significant ideological ground, allowing the BJP’s narrative to dominate the national political imagination.
The dismal performance of the Congress in Bihar elections—one of its worst electoral showings in the state—has far-reaching implications for the oppositional politics of India. Although at the state level, there are many regional parties each of which has a formidable presence within a particular state, their influence remains geographically confined. They lack the national spread, organisational reach and ideological breath needed to challenge the ruling party at the national level. In this landscape, Congress remains the only political formation with a countrywide presence. Yet, paradoxically, this very party that could serve as the backbone of democratic opposition, is today the weakest link in the opposition chain. The party that was once the central axis of Indian politics, appears to be adrift, its electoral performance erratic and its organisational presence increasingly hollow. The Bihar verdict is symptomatic of this decay. it failed to make even a modest impact, revealing a disconnect that is no longer episodic but systemic.
Democracies thrive on strong oppositions. In India the opposition today looks hollow because Congress, the only truly national opposition, is running on fumes.
If Congress is to remain relevant, it must confront uncomfortable truths. It must shed its sense of entitlement, decentralise its structure, rebuild its cadre base and cultivate a strong state-level leadership. It must also learn to treat alliances with respect and shed its arrogance. It must also shed its casual approach towards politics and rather than its episodic process of mobilisation, it must get into a mode of sustained political engagement. Finally, it must craft an ideological and policy narrative that speaks to the aspirations and anxieties of contemporary India.
The choice before Congress is existential: reinvent itself structurally, ideologically, and organisationally—or risk becoming a relic of its own history. The Bihar verdict is not simply a setback; it is a warning. Whether the party can heed it remains to be seen.
