Analysis | Congress Bihar Show Casts Shadow On INDIA Bloc’s Existence, Keeps Alliance Thinking
Bihar’s mandate exposed Congress’s shrinking influence, deepening INDIA bloc tensions and pushing allies like DMK to reassess ties.
Published : November 14, 2025 at 10:02 PM IST
|Updated : November 15, 2025 at 6:36 PM IST
Hyderabad: The NDA alliance has together painted Bihar’s electoral map saffron, left-right-centre, while the Mahagathbandhan was reduced to a poor minority lot in the 243-member House. Narendra Modi-led BJP came first. Nitish Kumar’s JDU finished as a close second, and another ally, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), finished fourth.
Congress, the Principal Opposition in the Lok Sabha, remained in the single digit. At one point in time, it was leading in only one seat and nearly slipped out of the standings.
The grand old party fielded candidates in 61 seats, after its hard bargaining with the RJD, and registered a less than 10 per cent strike rate. Its abysmal performance has resulted in a weaker Opposition in the House.
The negligible presence of the Opposition would make its voice feeble against the treasury benches. The ruling party’s pre-poll alliance romped to power with a brute majority, winning 202 seats.
In Bihar, the Prime Minister launched scathing attacks on the Mahagathbandhan in every other campaign. One of them is blaming the RJD for being in the truck with the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, MK Stalin, during the campaign trail.
He furthered it on the India bloc, led by Congress, saying that the DMK party leaders were harassing Bihar migrants in Tamil Nadu. This drew a sharp backlash, with Stalin, daring whether the PM would be able to repeat the hate speech while visiting Tamil Nadu.
Stalin’s response was measured and not in any way to antagonise the people of Bihar. One of the media houses close to the power centre ran an interview with a Bihar immigrant’s daughter who came as a board topper in Tamil, explaining how welcoming Tamil Nadu is.
These campaigns were launched at a time when Bihar migrants were returning to Bihar for their “Chhath Puja” vacation. At the same time, there were whispers in Tamil Nadu’s power corridor about the State’s decision to bring about legislation to officially ban the use of Hindi in hoardings and the mass media campaigns.
The word around is that Congress reached out to the regional party, suggesting it drop the idea, citing the Bihar polls. Scene changed. The government-backed fact-check media unit dismissed the idea as rumours. Party spokesperson and former Rajya Sabha MP TKS Elangovan joined the exercise and assuaged the fears of migrants that nothing of that sort would be done, asserting that the party would not do anything in contravention of the Constitution.
Whether it is right or wrong is not the debate, but obliging Congress is. Most of the party workers and second-rung leaders are not comfortable working with Congress. They see the Congress is a baggage, which most of the DMK cadres are not happy to carry.
The DMK high command continues to hope that the Congress will be able to come to power in the Centre, and that would help it negotiate for better deals for the state and pro-Tamil measures, which it now claims it is unable to achieve due to the right-wing government in the centre. It also wants to remove the state from the ambit of the National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test(NEET) for undergraduate medicine and dentistry programmes.
The DMK has been vocal against the gate-keeping exam and is one of its key election promises, which it is struggling to keep. These aspects bear weight on the DMK to consider the Congress party as its junior partner in the state-level alliance as part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance(INDIA) bloc in the upcoming election. The Bihar election results will nudge the Dravidian party to rethink its strategy, as it is an open secret that Congress continues to piggyback on Dravidian parties ever since it was routed away from the State’s power corridors in the 1960s.
If the DMK ditches Congress in the 2026 election, it would be able to contest in more seats or accommodate more seats for its allies. Tamil Nadu has another Bihar connection. It is the Special Intensive Revision(SIR) carried out by the Election Commission to clean up the voter rolls in Bihar.
In Tamil Nadu, the SIR enumeration form allows inclusion in the voter roll if the voter’s name figured in the SIR list of Bihar. Yes, the deleted voter in Bihar can be added if the extract of the same is submitted as a document.
This is the first election Bihar faced after the SIR was completed, with the Apex Court refusing to stay it. Even before it was done, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has launched his ‘vote chori’ campaign, faulting the ruling BJP for manipulating the voter list to keep winning. It doesn’t seem to have resonated well with the voters. He has only two options before him. He needs to either amp it up to strike a chord in the people’s court or to knock on the doors of the Supreme Court.
In 2026, his party will have a shot at power in Kerala and Assam. West Bengal and the Union Territory, Puducherry, too go to the polls. Congress last came to power in Puducherry in 2016 and lost its majority in 2021, resulting in the imposition of the President’s Rule.
In 2016, the Congress party lost Assam to the BJP. As for Kerala, Congress lost power in the same year. The CPI(M)-led left front came to power and has been keeping Congress away for two consecutive terms. In Kerala, Congress did not fight as the INDIA bloc.
It fought on its own and against the constituents of INDIA bloc. It took on CPI(M) and CPI. The latest contest one was during Wayanad Lok Sabha bypoll. The seat was vacated by the Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, who chose to retain Rae Bareli. His sister Priyanka Gandhi contested against a CPI candidate to enter the Lower House of the Parliament, and sits next to him in the opposition bench.
The party may need to make a strong statement in Kerala and Assam to hold the INDIA bloc together. It must take on the Left in Kerala even as it relies on — or negotiates with — the same Left in West Bengal next year, much like its understanding with the DMK in Tamil Nadu. The irony is unmistakable: the Left pushed Congress out of power in both Kerala and West Bengal, and the DMK did the same in Tamil Nadu.
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