Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won a landslide victory in the recent assembly elections in Bihar, one of the country’s poorest but politically most influential states.
Located in northeastern India, the state is home to approximately 130 million people. It is seen as a political threat, setting political trends in the Hindi speaking region of the country.
Bihar controls the fourth highest number of MLAs in the lower house of Parliament in New Delhi, making it politically powerful.
After two phases of voting on 6 November and 11 November, results from the Election Commission of India showed that the NDA won a landslide 202 seats in the 243-member legislature, while the BJP alone got 89 seats.
India’s main opposition party Congress won only six seats, its weakest showing in the state’s history.
What did Congress say on its defeat?
Before the elections, the Election Commission revised the voter list and removed about 10% of the state’s 74 million voters from the list.
The commission said the amendment was needed in view of large-scale migration of workers, young citizens becoming eligible to vote and non-reporting of deaths in the state.
But Congress said the move has deprived poor and minority voters.
After the results were declared, Rahul Gandhi, the most prominent Congress politician, called the elections “unfair”.
“This result in Bihar is truly surprising. We could not win an election which was not fair from the very beginning,” Mr Gandhi had said in a post on social media platform X.
Senior lawyer and opposition politician Kapil Sibal, formerly associated with the Congress, accused the BJP of capturing key democratic institutions like the Election Commission.
“This institutional capture undermines the independence and credibility of these bodies, making it impossible to conduct free and fair elections,” Sibal, currently an independent MP, told DW.
Will Congress be able to regain popularity?
Nevertheless, election results in Bihar show that the Congress campaign was widely unpopular among voters.
Political analysts say that Congress should focus on the structural and leadership failures of the party. Some party insiders also shared similar views, and stressed the need for course correction and effective internal renewal.
The Congress party promised an investigation to find out the reasons for its election defeat.
“This will serve as a warning. We will introspect and see what needs to be done to regain the confidence of voters, and formulate a more effective and credible political strategy,” a senior party official told DW on condition of anonymity.
Promote Modi and national government
The Bihar election was seen as a major popularity test for Prime Minister Modi.
By securing victory, the BJP sought to build momentum ahead of other key state elections in the next two years, including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and the national elections in 2029.
The landslide victory also boosted Modi’s federal government, which has been ruling without an absolute parliamentary majority since last year’s national election. This configuration has forced the BJP to rely on regional allies.
However, since the national election, the BJP has won most of the major state elections.
The BJP and its coalition partners currently rule most of India’s 28 states and eight union territories.
Meanwhile, Congress – which ruled India for more than 60 years after independence from the British Empire in 1947 – holds power in only three states in the world’s most populous country.
Need a strong alliance?
Senior political analyst Radhika Ramsesan said the Congress needs to form a strong alliance with regional parties to counter the dominance of the BJP.
“The Congress is in a slump, having lost all major elections in the states that went to polls after the 2024 parliamentary elections,” he told DW.
Rashid Kidwai, a political commentator and visiting fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, told DW that the Congress’s entire failure in Bihar is “symbolic of its overall decline, lack of ideology, leadership and connect with the grassroots.”
He called for reconsideration of the future direction of the party.
Kidwai said, “The Congress party must take responsibility for its poor performance in Bihar by fostering a real, united alliance with regional allies.” “Ultimately, the party needs to get its internal house in order and act with humility to remain relevant against a disciplined electoral force like the BJP.”
Edited by: Srinivas Majumdaru