Post-RS poll fiasco, Cong faces existential crisis in Bihar

Dissidents in the party, whose numbers is growing day by day, are demanding the immediate resignations of state leadership

Barely two days after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept all five Rajya Sabha (RS) seats from Bihar, the Congress unit here is confronting an existential crisis marked by its acute helplessness in holding its tiny flock of just six MLAs together. The party’s wafer-thin strength in the 243-member assembly has left it with no room for tough disciplinary action — expulsion or suspension included — against the three legislators, who stayed away from the RS polls, as any such move risks further erosion of its already precarious numbers and total wipeout.

A meeting of state Congress in Patna on Wednesday. (@INCBihar)

The absence of MLAs Manohar Prasad Singh (Manihari), Surendra Prasad Kushwaha (Valmikinagar) and Manoj Bishwas (Forbesganj) — alongside one RJD legislator — handed the fifth seat to the NDA on preference votes, triggering fresh speculation that the entire Congress group may cross over for ‘larger gains’ in the NDA.

A senior LJP (RV) leader and minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet Sanjay Kumar had openly declared weeks earlier that all six Congress MLAs were in touch with the ruling alliance and would join soon. During the RS polls also, senior JD(U) leader and working president Sanjay Kumar Jha hinted at the same, suggesting the legislators lacked faith in the Congress leadership and saw brighter prospects elsewhere.

The Congress is also grappling with the challenges posed by its allies, RJD and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), in the state polls in West Bengal, Assam and Kerala. While the RJD decided not to field its nominees in West Bengal in an apparent bid to support the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, instead of supporting the Congress, it has been eyeing to contest about a few seats in Kerala under alliance with the LDF. The JMM is also eyeing around a dozen seats to fight in Assam, where the Congress is in direct contest against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A day-long “Bihar Congress Bachao” mahasammelan organised by disgruntled leaders, including former MLA Chhatrapati Shahi and former spokesman Anand Madhab on Tuesday saw an impressive gathering of the dissident party workers in Patna. Carrying on their tirade against the present dispensation, they lashed out at state president Rajesh Ram and All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge Krishna Allavaru, demanded their immediate resignations, and passed a resolution to burn their effigies before marching to Delhi. The gathering was projected as a “Mukti Andolan” to purge “middlemen and brokers” and restore dignity to grassroots workers.

This latest flashpoint only underscores a deeper, long-standing malaise. Congress has repeatedly struggled to retain its legislators in Bihar, a pattern of defections that stretches back years. In the past, the party lost former BPCC chief Ashok Choudhary along with several others to the JD(U), while MLAs such as Murari Gautam and Siddharth Saurav also deserted.

From commanding nearly 200 seats in the 1980s to shrinking to just six today, the decline has been relentless, driven by organisational drift and weak loyalty structures. Senior leaders privately harbour serious doubts about the integrity of the current crop — particularly five MLAs who joined the party barely days before the 2025 assembly elections and were promptly handed tickets as Congress nominees despite their backgrounds in the rival political outfits. Many of these legislators are known to maintain cordial ties with JD(U), BJP and other NDA partners, raising fears they could easily switch sides when the political arithmetic favours them.

“The RJD and the Congress leaders required deeper introspection to know how the RJD candidate Amarendra Dhari Singh lost his elections despite having the minimum required number of MLAs in the opposition camp. There was no proper coordination from the RJD side with the local Congress party leadership and its MLAs. RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and AD Singh started to reach out to the MLAs, when they went unreachable. Prior to this, none of the responsible leaders from the RJD sought to engage with them, allowing the NDA to take them into their trap,” said a seasoned Congress leader Kishore Kumar Jha, former BPCC chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh was also engaged much later.

With the high command in Delhi maintaining silence so far and a central team possibly heading to Patna for damage control, the Bihar Congress finds itself in an unenviable bind: too weak to punish dissent, too fragile to project strength, and too dependent on allies who are busy carving out larger slices for themselves. Ahead of the 2026 electoral cycle, the party’s inability to keep even its handful of MLAs in check is not just a state-level embarrassment — it threatens to ripple across the INDIA bloc at a time when unity is already fraying elsewhere.