Congress's Bihar rout review sweeps aside 'ticket selling' allegations, shifts blame to 'vote chori'

Helmed by party president Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi, the discussions saw the party’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, state chief Rajesh Ram and former Legislative Party leader Shakeel Ahmed Khan shifting the blame for the Congress’ poor performance on alleged “election engineering” that began with large-scale deletion of voters in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and concluded with the NDA coalition winning 202 of the state’s 243 assembly seats against the paltry 35 seat tally of the Opposition’s Grand Alliance.

Blame it on 'vote chori'

The Congress had managed to win only six of the 61 seats it contested as part of the Grand Alliance while its senior partner, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD, could win just 25 seats.

That the Congress high command was unwilling to look at the party’s own deficiencies that may have contributed towards the rout was clear and was more comfortable blaming “external factors” was clear in the remarks made by Allavaru, Rajesh Ram and Shakeel Ahmed Khan following the review. The trio, which has yet to take moral responsibility for the defeat despite raucous protests against them by scores of Bihar Congress leaders and allegations of “selling tickets to the highest bidder”, told reporters that despite the massive defeat the party had “not lost its vote share in the state”.

They claimed, instead, that the results were a “consequence of the Centre conspiring with the Election Commission” to secure a pre-determined result through “election engineering”.

Also read: Congress reviews Bihar debacle; contestants flag cash transfer, seat-sharing delay

Congress sources said told The Federal that though the “overwhelming feedback” given to Kharge and Rahul by a bulk of the party’s 61 candidates pointed fingers at the Allavaru-Ram-Khan troika, alongwith former state Congress chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh and independent Purnia MP Pappu Yadav, there were “instructions from the high command” to officially blame the defeat on “vote chori”.

Many in the Congress had feared, as reported by The Federal on November 23, that instead of fixing accountability for the disastrous results, the party leadership was gearing towards blaming the defeat almost entirely on a compromised election apparatus.

Not fixing accountability

Congress general secretary (organisation), KC Venugopal, himself under fire from a growing section within the party for his consistently ineffective management of intra-party affairs, declared on X after the Bihar review that “the Bihar election was not a genuine mandate, but a grossly managed and fabricated outcome”.

All party candidates who met Kharge and Rahul during the four-hour long review session, Venugopal claimed, “highlighted how SIR enabled targeted voter deletions and dubious additions, how blatant cash bribery under the so-called MMRY (Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana) scheme was used to influence voters even at polling stations, and how identical margins across constituencies exposed a pattern that no independent election commission would ever overlook”.

“These issues point to organised electoral malpractices and brazen violations of the Model Code of Conduct, carried out under the watch of an ECI that has increasingly behaved like an active collaborator in BJP’s election rigging. What happened in Bihar is nothing short of a direct assault on democracy,” Venugopal added.

Sources privy to the discussions, however, told The Federal that while several candidates did blame the SIR and the pre and mid-election distribution of Rs 10,000 to women voters by the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government as “major reasons” for the Grand Alliance’s loss, they added that the leadership had “unfortunately decided to suppress all other factors that the candidates spoke about, including sabotage, poor election management, confusion and lack of consensus in the seat-sharing with allies and the selling of tickets to about 18 candidates”.

A former multiple-term MLA, who lost the recent polls, said that the discussions with Kharge and Rahul were “free-wheeling”. He added that all candidates, who met the party president and Lok Sabha LoP in batches of 10 in the absence of Allavaru, were “happy that they were being allowed to speak freely without those responsible for the defeat being present in the room”. However, the former MLA said that the “end result of the review looks very disappointing because there appears to be no willingness in the high command to fix accountability for the defeat”.

Also read: Bihar rout triggers turmoil in Congress amid growing calls for accountability

Senior party leader Abidur Rahman, who is among the six victors from the Congress camp, held back no punches when he spoke to reporters after the review. While asserting that he had “left it to Rahul Gandhi” to decide what correctives the party needs to apply in Bihar, Rahman, who won the Araria seat against Shagufta Azim of the JD-U with a margin of over 12,000 votes, said he “told Rahul that tickets were sold to some candidates and this sent out a very bad message, which damaged the party in many seats”.

Among the three party MLAs to win from the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal region which also saw Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM bag five MLAs, Rahman said, “In Seemanchal, our alliance lost many seats that we should have won comfortably because of sabotage by our own leaders who encouraged voters to either vote for patang (kite; the AIMIM’s poll symbol) or teer (arrow, the poll symbol of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD-U).”

'Baseless allegations'

Allavaru and Khan, however, dismissed all allegations of tickets being sold by them to several candidates. Responding to allegations of selling tickets, Allavaru told reporters, “There were controversial candidates but those candidates lost the election by fewer votes compared to several of our other candidates; so who had bought tickets – those who lost by big margins or those who lost narrowly. People making such allegations should speak responsibly."

“All these allegations are baseless and there is no proof (that tickets were sold),” Khan said, claiming that “a very large number of people had asked for tickets and it is alright for them to have aspired to become candidates but only one person could be fielded on one seat and so those who were left out are making these allegations now; it is all a lie.”

Pappu Yadav factor

Sources said a large section of party candidates, especially from the Seemanchal region, also blamed the “undue interference of Pappu Yadav in the campaign” for the party’s drubbing.

The Purnia MP has been facing severe backlash from a section of Bihar Congress leaders who allege that he “influenced ticket distribution through Allavaru”. “Several outsiders were brought into the Congress in the run up to the polls on Pappu Yadav’s recommendation and he got Allavaru to give some of them tickets even though they neither had political stature in their constituency nor were part of the Congress system.

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

In constituencies where Pappu Yadav could not get his people a ticket, he sabotaged our campaign,” a senior party leader told The Federal.

The anger against the Purnia MP also manifested itself in a violent way shortly before Kharge and Rahul arrived at the review meeting. Sources said the party’s Vaishali candidate, Engineer Sanjeev got into a heated argument with Yadav’s close aide Jitendra Kumar, who lost the polls on a Congress’ ticket from the Purnia assembly seat.

“Sanjeev was speaking loudly about the party suffering in the election because of outsiders being given tickets when Jitendra interrupted him because he felt Sanjeev was taking potshots at him and others close to Pappu Yadav... and all of a sudden, Sanjeev got very agitated and threatened to shoot Jitendra in the mouth if he continued to speak,” a leader privy to the altercation said.

Congress trio slammed

Sources said senior party MP Tariq Anwar too was “extremely critical” of the way the Allavaru, Ram and Khan handled various aspects of the election, including seat-sharing negotiations with the RJD and Left parties and ticket distribution.

Though Anwar declined to share details of his feedback to the high command saying, “I have placed my views before them and they have assured me that corrective measures will be taken swiftly”, sources said the Katihar MP too accused Allavaru and the state leaders of “selling tickets, insulting senior leaders, sidelining party loyalists and spoiling equations with (RJD leader and the Grand Alliance’s CM face) Tejashwi Yadav; all of which damaged the party severely.”