Bihar verdict triggers turmoil in RJD and Congress as INDIA bloc weakens

Inevitable as it was, the Grand Alliance’s humiliating decimation in Bihar has set the cat among the pigeons. If knives are out within the RJD, including the party’s first family, for Tejashwi Yadav’s closest advisor and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Yadav, dissent and discord are growing within the Congress too and given the scale of NDA’s triumph, the tremors of the Bihar verdict are being felt in the Opposition camp nationally too.

Alliance stunned into silence

The RJD, which had fought the polls projecting Tejashwi as the Grand Alliance’s chief ministerial candidate, had won just 25 of the 145 odd seats it contested, while the Congress managed to bag only six of its 61 seats. The Left parties and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) of Mukesh Sahani fared even worse. The CPI and the VIP drew a blank while the CPI-ML (Liberation), which had won 12 of the 19 seats it contested five years ago, ended up bagging just two of the 20 seats it fought on.

Also read | What went horribly wrong for Rahul-Tejashwi in Bihar? | Talking Sense With Srini

The Indian Inclusive Party, which had joined the alliance days before the election and was allotted three seats, recorded a lone debut win in Saharsa, where its chief, IP Gupta, registered a slender win. The Opposition bloc, thus, finished with just 35 seats in its corner as against the massive 202-seat triumph of the NDA.

Expectedly stunned by the rout, the alliance leaders had largely switched to silent mode when the scale of the NDA’s victory became apparent. By late Friday evening, they emerged with the response typical of political parties in times of defeat; expressing gratitude to the voters, shock on the verdict and doubts about a poll process undoubtedly compromised by the Election Commission turning a blind eye to massive cash doles the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government unveiled on the poll eve and a revision of electoral rolls that was hardly transparent.

Shockwaves hit Lalu clan

Then came the tremors. On Saturday afternoon, the RJD was jolted by Rohini Acharya, Tejashwi’s sister who had first made headlines early last year as the daughter who saved the life of her ailing father, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, by donating her kidney to him, and later as the party’s Lok Sabha candidate who narrowly lost her debut electoral contest from Bihar’s Saran against the BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy.

“I’m quitting politics and I’m disowning my family (sic),” Rohini announced on her X handle, claiming “this is what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked me to do”.

Sanjay, a Haryana native, is largely seen within the RJD as Tejashwi’s brain trust; the man who controls all access to the former Bihar deputy chief minister, helps plan the party’s election strategy and also doubles up as interlocutor with allies. Rameez Nemat Khan is the son-in-law of Rizwan Zaheer, a former Samajwadi Party MP who has been lodged in an Uttar Pradesh jail since 2022 on a battery of criminal charges, including murder. Rameez, sources in the RJD said, is a friend of Tejashwi from the latter’s days as a national-level cricketer but has emerged in recent years as the person who manages both Tejashwi and the RJD’s social media communications.

In publicly blaming Sanjay and Rameez for her decision to quit politics and “disown” her family, Rohini, say RJD insiders, has given vent to a collective anger that has been simmering for months within a section of party leaders. A senior RJD leader confirmed to The Federal that the earlier rift in the Lalu clan, which saw the RJD supremo expelling his elder son and former Bihar minister Tej Pratap Yadav from the party for six years, was also because of “the distrust that they (Sanjay and Rameez) helped fan in the family against Tej Pratap”.

Rumblings grow inside RJD

Tej Pratap, who had been expelled from the RJD in May this year after a post surfaced on his X handle featuring him and a lady along with a caption claiming the two had been “in a relationship for 12 years”, had blamed his expulsion on “Jaichands” (traitors) within the party. He floated his own political outfit, the Janshakti Janata Dal, and went on to contest the recent polls from the Mahua seat he had last won in 2015, but finished third this time round while ensuring that the RJD didn’t win the seat either.

Also read | Lalu’s daughter Rohini Acharya quits politics, says she is disowning her family

RJD sources said that with Rohini going public with her comments against Sanjay and Rameez, other senior leaders in the party may follow suit or at least raise their objections against the duo within the party whenever its newly elected MLAs and office bearers meet to take stock of the poll debacle.

A senior RJD leader who was suspended during the election for “anti-party activities” told The Federal that Sanjay, who played a key role in the RJD’s candidate selection process, had “misled Tejashwi about the victory prospects of many candidates who ended up losing badly”. The suspended leader, a former MLA, alleged further that it was Sanjay and Rameez who dictated to “certain party spokespersons who have become famous on X over the past year to routinely attack upper castes by convincing Tejashwi that this would help the party consolidate votes of backward and extremely backward castes and Dalits but ironically when candidates were to be picked, Sanjay got Tejashwi to give tickets to several forward caste candidates”.

A section of RJD leaders believe that the attacks on Sanjay and Rameez are, for now, an indirect challenge to Tejashwi’s authority within the party, but if their concerns go unaddressed could quickly escalate into a full-scale rebellion reminiscent of the one led by Samrat Chaudhary (now the BJP’s Tarapur MLA and deputy CM in the outgoing government) back in 2014.

Sources said party seniors, including RJD vice president Abdul Bari Siddiqui, have already urged Tejashwi that any meeting called to assess the poll loss must be held in the absence of Sanjay. Without blaming any one leader for the defeat, Siddiqui told The Federal, “Introspection of the Bihar result must be done by party leaders from Bihar… I have conveyed my view on the matter to our leadership.”

Congress faces internal fury

The results have triggered a similar churn in the Congress party, too. Just like disgruntled RJD leaders are gunning for Tejashwi from Sanjay’s shoulders, unhappy Congress leaders are blaming party leader Raul Gandhi’s handpicked lieutenants, AICC general secretary (organisation) KC Venugopal and the party’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, for the rout.

The resentment within the Congress had, in fact, begun to become apparent even before the results were announced. Minutes after polling for the second phase of the election ended on November 11, former Union minister Shakeel Ahmad, a former MP and MLA for several terms, sent his resignation from the party to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

Ahmad, who had been a minister during the UPA-I government when he represented Bihar’s Madhubani seat in the Lok Sabha, told The Federal that his grouse was “with people in the state unit and the Bihar in-charge”. Asked if he was willing to return to the party if the high command wished so, Ahmad said, “They (the state leadership and Allavaru) were chosen by the high command.”

Veteran party leader and Katihar MP Tariq Anwar, who had also raised questions over the Congress’s choice of candidates ahead of the polls, has also publicly held Allavaru, Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Ram and outgoing legislative party chief Shakeel Ahmed Khan, as well as “poor coordination” among allies, responsible for the defeat.

Within the party, several seniors say “such noises” will grow as long as the high command continues what one functionary described as “rewarding failure with patronage.” This leader questioned Venugopal’s five-year tenure as general secretary (organisation), arguing that the ongoing organisational rebuilding program (Sangathan Srijan) had been a “colossal failure”, state units remained weak, electoral losses were mounting, and the AICC had become largely inactive while Venugopal remains “all-powerful” only because he “shadows Rahul all the time.”

Congress's influence under threat

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his victory speech, hinting at a “split in the Congress” due to Rahul’s leadership failures, some Congress MPs believe the party faces turbulence deeper than anything seen in the past decade. One such MP said Modi’s words were essentially a warning that Congress leaders were ready to defect and “a dare to Rahul to stop the imminent exodus”.

INDIA bloc leaders concerned about the Congress’s mounting poll losses warn that the Bihar result will severely weaken the party’s centrality within the coalition, as allies wary of Rahul’s leadership will increasingly question his party’s ability to take on the BJP nationally, “when it cannot win a single state election”.

Also read | Rahul, Kharge review Bihar election rout as Congress doubles down on ‘vote chori’ claim

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has long been sceptical of the Congress’s combativeness against the BJP. It was not until the Election Commission began its SIR in Bihar – now in phase two of a pan-India rollout – that the Trinamool rejoined ranks with the Congress on the issue of ‘vote chori’ but with the Bihar results now being touted as a repudiation of that narrative, it remains to be seen how the Trinamool engages with the Congress and the wider INDIA bloc when Parliament convenes for its winter session on December 1.

The Left parties and the DMK could also reassess their approach in the run-up to elections in Tamil Nadu, Bengal, and Kerala next year. In Kerala, the Congress-led UDF is in direct contest with the CPM-led LDF, while in Bengal, the Congress and Left hope to ally against the Trinamool. In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK may also be miserly in allotting seats to ally Congress, using the latter’s string of defeats as justification.

Many Congress leaders also believe the Bihar results will complicate seat-sharing with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party ahead of the crucial 2027 UP Assembly polls. Akhilesh had campaigned extensively for Grand Alliance candidates in Bihar. The Congress’s miserable showing may now force him to reconsider how many seats he can reasonably concede to the party.

The Bihar results, thus, spell trouble not only for the RJD and the Congress but for the broader Opposition coalition just when the INDIA bloc needed to put aside internal disputes to counter a BJP that, after the setbacks of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has regained full political momentum.