Leadership crisis, alliance angst: Bihar verdict deepens INDIA bloc rift, Congress stares at isolation

Mahagathbandhan partners RJD and Congress are bickering over the decimation suffered in the Bihar elections. (File: PTI)

With the dust barely settled on Bihar's crushing mandate, the rift between the RJD and the Congress, the Mahagathbandhan's two principal partners, appears to be rapidly widening and, in the process, exposing fractures that were building throughout the campaign but are now spilling into the open.

The Congress, already grappling with internal disquiet after its dismal performance, is battling simultaneous crises -- an angry ally in the RJD, growing resentment within its own state unit, and sharp questions over its own leader Rahul Gandhi's electoral instincts.

The bitterness began surfacing soon after the Bihar results were declared. A report in The Indian Express revealed that a shaken Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge urged Sonia Gandhi to intervene with her son, as INDIA allies accused Rahul Gandhi of not pulling his weight. As per the report, RJD leader and the Mahagathbandhan's Bihar m face Tjashwi Yadav categorically pointed out to Kharge that Rahul, who began the campaign with high-octane motorbike rallies, "vanished" when crucial coordination was needed.

They point to the fact that he twice left the country during the campaign and was abroad even when votes were counted. The RJD leadership believes this was not just poor optics but also signalled lack of seriousness towards the most consequential battle before 2026.

The RJD's grievances run deeper. Tejashwi is also believed to have pointed out that the Congress dragged its feet on endorsing him as the Mahagathbandhan's CM face. Worse, Rahul Gandhi unilaterally declared VIP chief Mukesh Sahani, an EBC leader, as the alliance's Deputy CM face. RJD believes that this move alienated two of MGB's core vote banks, Muslims and Dalits, who believed someone from their communities should have been projected. Sahani went on to lose his own seat and his party failed to win a single constituency.

Across the opposition INDIA bloc, concerns are now being voiced more openly and the decimation in Bihar appears to have acted as the trigger. Mamata Banerjee's TMC has already hinted she would be a more suitable Opposition leader than Rahul Gandhi. Akhilesh Yadav, in conversations with DMK chief M.K. Stalin, reportedly pointed to the Congress's humiliating performance in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and argued that the party must accept its sharply diminished ground strength instead of demanding primacy and acting big brother.

The resentment burst into the open in Bihar on Monday during the Congress's internal review meeting. In the presence of AICC Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, 27 of the state's 38 District Congress Committee presidents listed out reasons for the party's collapse. Weak booth-level presence, absence of Booth Level Agents in several segments, lack of cooperation from the RJD, and the complete failure of Sahani's EBC vote to transfer to the Congress despite being projected as Deputy CM were the primary ones cited. Many leaders even argued that the party would have performed better without the alliance.

The Congress won only six of the 61 seats it contested. Party leaders who lost, including former CLP leader Shakeel Ahmad Khan, also claimed that tying up with the RJD dragged the Congress down. State Congress chief Rajesh Ram, another unsuccessful candidate, declared after the review that the alliance with RJD was "purely electoral" and that strengthening the organisation, not the alliance, was the party's top priority in the state.

The RJD responded sharply to this. State president Mangani Lal Mandal dared the Congress to walk out, saying the party would "know its aukaat." He argued that the Congress's relevance in Bihar survives only because of the RJD's goodwill and that the party had consistently made "unreasonable demands" in seat-sharing.

Yet, beneath the public barbs lies a deeper worry about leadership at the national level. Allies have raised questions about Rahul Gandhi’s campaign strategy, particularly his insistence on foregrounding issues like "vote chori" and the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive. Congress leaders who attended the Bihar review admitted that the campaign's excessive focus on the SIR narrative did not resonate with voters, especially when the NDA was running a far more targeted welfare and caste-driven outreach.

The pattern is not new. In earlier state elections -- Uttar Pradesh 2022, Assam 2021, and even Karnataka 2018 -- Rahul Gandhi emphasised national themes that often failed to translate into local electoral traction. In Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the Congress won only two seats despite Rahul focusing on issues like the Hathras case and unemployment, while the Samajwadi Party consolidated the anti-BJP vote. In Assam, the Congress's narrative around CAA failed to dent BJP's momentum, which drew heavily from welfare schemes and micromanaged booth networks. Similar mismatches have marked several Congress campaigns under Rahul's leadership, and Bihar has reinforced this perception among allies.

For now, both RJD and Congress insist the INDIA bloc remains intact, but the mood in Patna and Delhi suggests otherwise. The Congress's internal fractures and the RJD's growing impatience with Rahul Gandhi's leadership are intensifying simultaneously. As one senior Congress leader put it after the Bihar review: "We are not even fixing the problems we are acknowledging".