NEW DELHI: Discontent within the Bihar Congress surfaced sharply at the party’s first post-election review meeting, where several candidates flagged flaws in ticket allocation, selling of tickets and ‘friendly fights’ between allies as main reasons for the humiliating defeat in the recent Assembly polls.
The closed-door meeting, held at the party headquarters, was attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi.
Incidentally, Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and AICC Bihar Observer Krishna Allavaru were conspicuously absent from the review meetings.
The meeting came weeks after the Congress suffered a severe drubbing in Bihar, securing only six seats out of the 61 seats it contested. According to sources, the party’s six newly elected MLAs were given one-on-one meetings with Kharge and Gandhi to present their assessments. Meanwhile, the candidates who lost were asked to meet the leadership in batches to brief them about the constituency-level failures and organisational lapses.
Speaking to this paper, newly elected Araria MLA Abidur Rahman said he urged the high command to take strict action against those he believes were responsible for the Congress’s collapse in Bihar.
“I have submitted the names of the leaders who are responsible,” Rahman said. “However, I do not wish to disclose them to the media at this stage.” He added that despite being one of the most senior leaders of the party from the Seemanchal region, he himself was initially denied a ticket.
“There have been instances of ticket selling, and several deserving workers were ignored,” said Rahman. Such decisions demotivated cadres, he said, adding that the party must confront these issues head-on if it hopes to rebuild its credibility among voters.
Sources said that several candidates attributed the poll setback to discrepancies in ticket allocation, internal factionalism, friendly fights between contenders, and the decision to grant nominations to turncoats who had joined the party shortly before polls. Several leaders reportedly complained that long-time workers were overlooked in favour of newcomers with little grassroots connection.Leaders argued that the lack of coordination at the state level, coupled with mixed signals from Delhi, weakened the party’s preparedness on the ground.
Later, Venugopal took to X and said, “Today’s 4-hour review meeting highlighted how SIR enabled targeted voter deletions and dubious additions, how blatant cash bribery under the so-called MMRY scheme was used to influence voters even at polling stations, and how identical margins across constituencies exposed a pattern that no independent EC would ever overlook”.