Congress bagged 27 out of the 41 seats it contested by piggy riding the Grand Alliance stitched by big partners Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and former State CM lalu Prasad. The Sunday’s poll results is seen as big boost for the Congress in Bihar where it had won just four seats in the 2010 polls after contesting all the 243 seats.
With the Congress contesting limited number of seats, its percentage has come down to 6.7 per cent as against 8.37 per cent in 2010 when 216 party candidates forfeited their deposits. Party wise, Congress continued to be at the fourth place in the vote percentage in this election too in which BJP got 24.8 per cent, followed by RJD 18.5 and JD(U) 16.7.
The party had not done well in the Assembly polls of Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Delhi and J&K. In Delhi, it scored a duck.
Congress lost no time in crediting party vice-president Rahul Gandhi for being the “architect” of the Grand Alliance. Party general secretary Shakeel Ahmed said that the Grand Alliance could not have been possible without Rahul’s initiative and that he was instrumental in bringing Nitish and lalu together.
Congress was a dominant force in Bihar till 1989 ruling it for most of the time since Independence barring a few years including those after the Emergency which had brought the undivided Janata Party to power on the call of “Total Revolution” by Jaya Prakash Narayan.
For over a quarter of a century, Congress has become a marginalised force in the Hindi heartland of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in the wake of the Mandal and Mandir surge which saw emergence of the social justice forces and gave strength to the BJP.
Interestingly by taking an alliance route, Congress has been able to resurrect itself in Bihar and bring some cheers to the sagging morale of party workers across the country.
Congress said the Bihar poll outcome was a referendum on the performance of PM Narendra Modi and asserted that he could soon face music from within BJP as “Margdarshak Mandal” will not remain “Mukdarshak Mandal”.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi termed the Bihar poll results as a “victory of unity over divisiveness”. He said that the poll verdict signified the defeat of the “divisive agenda of BJP and RSS”. “The truth is this victory is not against NDA but against the ideology of BJP, RSS and Modi. This is a message against putting Hindus against Muslims and making them fight to win elections,” a beaming Rahul said.
Taking a dig at Narendra Modi, the Congresss VP said that the prime minister should “step on the accelerator or people will throw him out of the driver’s seat”. He also wanted the Prime Minister to either “give up or tone down his arrogance”, noting that it would benefit not only the country but Modi too.
He also advised the Prime Minister to give up his foreign tours and talk about Pakistan and instead reach out to the farmers, labourers and unemployed youth to whom he had promised jobs. Targeting Modi, Rahul lamented the way the Prime Minister had canvassed for votes, saying that it neither enhances either his prestige or that of the country.