In New Delhi on Friday, Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition and Congress MP, spoke out after Bihar’s recent assembly election. He called the ruling coalition’s 200‑plus‑seat win “surprisingly” and claimed the contest was “not fair from the start.”
Gandhi, using the social‑media platform X, thanked the millions who had voted for the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan) and warned that the government would face a “constitutional battle” to defend democracy. “We failed to win an election that was not fair from the start,” he said. “The Congress Party and the INDIA Alliance will review this result and intensify our efforts to protect democracy.”
The stakes were high. The Grand Alliance was gutted to under 40 seats, while Congress itself fell to just five or six seats from the 61 contested. Earlier, party colleague Jairam Ramesh had accused the process of “vote chori” (vote theft) on a massive scale, but Rahul Gandhi stopped short of naming the Prime Minister or the Election Commission.
Behind the scenes, Congress convened a virtual meeting with its Bihar officials to push for a “forensic audit” of voter deletions, booth‑level discrepancies, and electronic voting machine (EVM) movement logs. Party workers reported that over 1.8 million voter names—many from Muslim, Dalit, and Other Backward Class (EBC) communities—were removed during a special revision of the voter list. The Election Commission disputed the claim, saying the changes reflected “standard cleansing of 14.7 lakh duplicates and 3.2 lakh deceased” names.
Within the INDIA bloc, reactions were tempered. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, whose party’s seats dropped from 75 to 31, praised Rahul Gandhi’s “moral clarity” but urged the alliance to focus on “organizational collapse” rather than just institutional sabotage. CPI(ML) Liberation’s Dipankar Bhattacharya echoed calls for a review, citing reported CCTV blackouts in 127 polling rooms.
BJP spokespeople responded quickly. Sambit Patra dismissed Rahul Gandhi’s criticism as “the whining of a prince who lost his toy kingdom.” Amit Shah shared a video of women voters praising Nitish Kumar’s welfare programs, adding that “Bihar’s daughters rejected the dynasty.” Patra added that Rahul Gandhi should introspect rather than “insult their verdict.”
With Delhi and Rajasthan municipal elections on the horizon, Rahul Gandhi’s pledge to “intensify” the constitutional fight signals that we may see nationwide protests, legal challenges to the Election Commission’s revision process, and a fresh push by the Congress for electoral integrity. The story continues to unfold as India watches whether the allegations of irregularities will prompt official investigations or judicial scrutiny.
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