A leadership disconnected from ground realities, a central command pushing issues that do not resonate, an organization that has hollowed out through years of decay, a dysfunctional alliance, and a changing minority vote were some of the issues flagged by local leaders during an internal review of the Bihar elections that was attended by the Congress top brass including Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, party president Mallikarjun Kharge and general secretary KC Venugopal.
The strategic missteps and serious organisational lapses flagged by as many as 70 leaders of the Bihar Congress who met the leadership in batches, however, have failed to prompt the Congress leadership to draw any actionable insight from the rout it suffered in the Bihar Assembly elections.
Despite a rare moment of candour from state leaders, who directly linked the party's poor performance to strategic drift at the top, there are no indications that the Congress is preparing for any course correction ahead of crucial state polls in 2026.
At the review meeting, several Bihar Congress leaders bluntly stated that Rahul Gandhi's relentless focus on "vote chori" and the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise failed to resonate with voters. Leaders said the campaign was "monotonously repetitive", disconnected from ground realities, and ultimately cost the party critical mindshare at a time when bread-and-butter issues were dominating priorities for the electorate.
The criticism was sharp. some leaders pointed fingers at AICC in-charge for Bihar Krishna Allavaru, blaming him for faulty ticket distribution, even calling for heads to roll. Some others also raised the issue of "proportional representation", claiming that the victory of candidates from individual upper castes is vastly higher than their population share, while that from OBC communities was vastly in line with their numbers.
At some point, Rahul Gandhi conceded he was "equally responsible" for the defeat as some leaders argued that the national leadership pushed a narrative that Bihar's voters neither understood nor cared about.
Bihar Congress leaders noted that while Rahul Gandhi held only four rallies in the state, he made SIR the central theme of all of them, ignoring inflation, unemployment and caste issues that local leaders believed would have delivered better traction.
At least one senior leader told the leadership that Bihar voters were angry that the Congress had "outsourced its messaging" to a narrative crafted in Delhi rather than one grounded in the state's socio-political dynamics.
The Print reported that leaders in the meeting also flagged the "outsider factor", arguing that the party's local machinery was overshadowed by narratives driven by RJD's Tejashwi Yadav and by AIMIM's targeted expansion in Seemanchal.
The meeting also revealed the extent of organisational paralysis. District units were reportedly inactive. Booth committees failed to mobilise voters. In many constituencies, Congress candidates received fewer votes than NOTA in several rounds. The party had fielded candidates in 61 seats but won only six, a strike rate of under 10 per cent, compared to 27 seats won in the 2015 election and 19 in 2020 when it contested fewer constituencies.
Some senior leaders conceded that an "overdependence on the RJD" meant that no independent Congress identity remained in Bihar, leaving the cadre demoralised and voters unconvinced.
Yet the party high command, according to participants, offered no structural changes, corrective measures, or reassessment of strategy. This is despite repeated patterns across elections where Rahul Gandhi's messaging has clashed with regional political realities.
In Madhya Pradesh in 2023, the Congress ran an aggressive "anti-Adani, anti-corruption" campaign at the central level, even as the BJP successfully localised its pitch around welfare and caste groups, resulting in a sweep where the Congress could secure only 66 seats out of 230 despite pre-poll surveys suggesting a neck-and-neck race.
In Rajasthan the same year, internal surveys warning that the party's "anti-Modi" messaging was alienating urban and middle-class voters were ignored, culminating in the Congress losing 115 of the 199 seats that went to polls.
Earlier, in the 2021 West Bengal election, the Congress leadership persisted with an anti-CAA, anti-Modi campaign that failed to cut any ice with voters transfixed by the TMC-BJP binary. The party drew a blank, losing every seat it contested.
In Kerala in 2021, the leadership again laid emphasis on national issues over administrative performance in a state widely acknowledged to be favourable to the LDF, and the Congress ended up suffering its worst defeat in four decades.
The Bihar review meeting also raised the issue of AIMIM and "vote splitting" in Muslim-dominated seats. Congress leaders argued that instead of strategically countering Owaisi's messaging, the leadership focused disproportionately on SIR, ceding ideological space on the minority plank and allowing the NDA to consolidate Hindu votes in key Seemanchal constituencies.
Friendly fights within the Mahagathbandhan, especially between Congress and Left candidates in at least 11 seats, further cost the alliance several thousand votes in close contests. Leaders pointed out that in at least seven seats, the combined votes of Congress, RJD and CPI(M-L) candidates were higher than the NDA winner's final tally.
Even these warnings appear to have made little impact on the party headquarters, which has adopted its familiar conciliatory posture of silence. One participant told The Print that "there is anger on the ground, but Delhi is unmoved", a sentiment that echoes earlier post-mortems after losses in Uttar Pradesh (2022), Uttarakhand (2022) and Himachal Pradesh (2024), where recommendations by state units for organisational overhaul were never implemented.
With Assembly elections in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry due next year, leaders fear the party is poised to repeat the Bihar mistakes. In West Bengal, for instance, the Congress is again focusing on national issues at a time when the battle is equally poised to be centred around identity politics, welfare delivery and corruption allegations.
In Kerala, factionalism is again at its peak, with no clarity on leadership or messaging. Leaders warn that unless the high command realigns its strategy to reflect regional political realities, the party could face "a string of repeat Bihar outcomes".
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