Why the Congress Sees Bihar as its Comeback Platform

The Congress party sees Bihar as its comeback chance. From four members in the last Bihar assembly, the party now has 27. Four Congressmen took oath as ministers, with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi attending the ceremony, in Patna today.

A party leader, a former minister in the Congress led government at the Centre, told NDTV: "This victory will give the Congress the much-needed opportunity to regroup and fight the BJP. We had lost our confidence after the 2014 defeat (in the Lok Sabha elections)."

The Congress is already looking at replicating the Bihar formula - of forming alliances with different parties opposed to the BJP - in other states where the party does not fancy a chance of forming a government on its own.

"The Congress is responsible for the victory of the alliance in Bihar. It played a very important role. It was the glue that brought the alliance together and held it," a top Congress leader said.

Once the alliance was stitched, he said, the three parties were sure of winning. "Because of the sections these three parties represent, the BJP didn't stand a chance," the party leader explained.

Advertisement

Party leaders say the Bihar alliance happened because the Congress saw in Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United and Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal allies "with whom it would not have to compromise on its ideology." Incidentally, the two parties are offshoots of the Janata Dal that ended the Congress's reign in Bihar in 1990. Before that, the party had ruled the state for all but six years since Independence.

"We will continue to do this in other places if we don't have to compromise on the ideas that the Congress represents," the top leader said. The party had fielded its own candidates on all 243 seats in the 2010 state elections in Bihar. This time, it fielded 41 candidates as part of the alliance and won over two-thirds of those seats.

Advertisement

"Despite the cynicism that we were a junior partner, we have ministers in the government now and several MLAs. Is it not better than four MLAs?" the top leader said.