How Congress Punctured Its Own SIR Narrative In Bihar

What began as Congress's most ambitious Bihar campaign in a decade ended not with triumph, but with a half-empty Gandhi Maidan and a narrative in ruins. The party had spotted what seemed like a perfect political opportunity in the Election Commission's voter verification drive, built an elaborate counter-offensive around it, and then watched helplessly as their own missteps transformed potential victory into crushing defeat.

The Golden Opportunity

The story begins with what Congress leaders thought was a gift from political heaven.

When the Election Commission of India announced plans to verify voter IDs and remove dubious entries from electoral rolls, the grand old party saw an opening it had not enjoyed in years.

The preparations had begun as soon as the ECI announced its plans to check voter IDs and remove frivolous voters, ostensibly those who were either dead or illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas living in the state and impacting election results. For Congress and its INDI Alliance partners, this represented something far more valuable than a routine administrative exercise. It was a chance to paint the BJP as anti-democratic vote thieves.

The party instinctively called it an attack on the Constitution. After meeting with ECI officials, they spread the narrative that the Commission planned to chop off 20 percent of voters, approximately 1.5 crore people, from the voter list. The rhetoric was inflammatory and effective. Congress led a statewide bandh on 9 July 2025 and took the fight to the courts through present and former party leaders.

Although they refrained from lodging formal complaints, Congress kept accusing the ECI of siding with the BJP. This was their Special Intensive Revision (SIR) narrative, a term that would become central to their Bihar strategy. When 65 lakh names were eventually removed from the list, and several leaders including RJD's Tejashwi Yadav and Bihar's deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Sinha were found to have dual IDs, Congress saw vindication of their claims, even though complaints by their booth level agents were never formally lodged.

A few clerical errors that led to some legitimate voters being omitted provided the perfect ammunition. The party and sympathetic civil rights activists used these instances to argue the entire initiative was a sham. One particularly effective video showed "Rahul Gandhi drinks tea with a dead man," someone supposedly removed from voter rolls despite being very much alive.

This was the opening Congress had been waiting for. For a party that had been relegated to the political margins in Bihar, reduced to what Prashant Kishor famously called "the tail of RJD," here was a chance to lead a statewide agitation and reclaim relevance.

The Yatra Begins: Initial Momentum

Rahul Gandhi, who rarely visited Bihar, committed to spending 16 long days in the state between 17 August and 1 September 2025. The Voter Adhikar Yatra would cover 1,600 kilometres, spread across 25 of 38 districts and 110 out of 243 assembly constituencies. This was not just about Bihar. It was a stepping stone for a series of statewide protests Congress planned to organise across India.

Gandhi's first task after landing was to unite the fractious INDI Alliance. He achieved early success when bitter rivals Pappu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav forgot their differences and publicly shook hands. Unlike the 9 July protest, Pappu was given a place on the alliance stage, from where he described Tejashwi as Jannayak, a term reserved for Bharat Ratna Karpoori Thakur.

The messaging was sharp and memorable. Congress and its allies branded Narendra Modi and the BJP as "Vote Chor" (vote thieves), building an anti-incumbency slogan: "Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhor" (Vote thief, leave the seat). Gandhi launched public outreach programmes, asking those allegedly disenfranchised to share their stories.

But the party had underestimated their opponents. BJP workers and transparency-focused influencers were ready with rapid response fact-checking. Every person Congress presented as wrongfully removed from voter rolls was immediately verified through live visuals and video evidence. The quick cross-check mechanism did not give Congress enough time to build hype around any falsehood or gain first-mover advantage.

Strategic Pivot and Warning Signs

Realising their SIR narrative was being systematically dismantled, Congress quickly consulted local partners who advised a strategic shift. Within 48 hours of the yatra's beginning, the focus moved from voter rights to local issues such as migration, crime, and corruption. Tejashwi Yadav openly suggested this pivot on stage.

Gandhi embraced the new strategy with characteristic flair. In Katihar, he trekked through fields to meet foxnut (makhana) farmers, highlighting the price differential between what farmers received and what consumers paid. True to form, he deployed the Dalit-Bahujan card, telling farmers they remained poor because sellers were from forward communities while they belonged to backward communities.

For GenZ audiences, Gandhi drove a motorcycle with sister Priyanka Gandhi, who playfully asked, "Is there a helmet for Didi too?" Tejashwi Yadav joined Gandhi on a Bullet bike ride alongside dozens of Congress leaders. When Darbhanga resident Shubham Saurabh lost his bike, Gandhi personally presented him with a new one in Patna. He even distributed toffees to protesting BJYM workers.

These videos proved highly impactful among GenZ voters, who formed a majority of Bihar's electorate. Congress workers, often relegated to the political fringes in state movements, felt energised after decades and participated with unprecedented visibility.

Alliance Tensions and the Show of Strength

But beneath this surface energy, deeper problems were festering. For Congress, Bihar was not just about defeating the BJP. It was about reclaiming lost ground from regional allies who had superseded them over four decades. Coming to power with RJD would not help the national Congress unit, which would remain subordinated under Lalu Yadav's shadow.

To demonstrate strength and improve future seat-sharing negotiations, Congress turned the yatra into an elaborate show of force. The guest list read like a who’s who of opposition chief ministers: Telangana's A. Revanth Reddy, Tamil Nadu's M. K. Stalin, Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, Jharkhand's Hemant Soren, and Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav.

However, these choices backfired spectacularly. The invitees lacked local relevance and some actively antagonised Bihar voters. When Revanth Reddy visited, his previous statement calling "Bihar DNA bad" was widely circulated, making Tejashwi Yadav visibly uncomfortable. Stalin's presence reminded people of anti-Bihari sentiment in Tamil Nadu. By the end, dignitaries like Sukhu, Soren, and Yadav received neither the coverage nor support they had expected.

Senior leader Ajay Maken, heading the screening committee, quietly held meetings about ticket distribution during the yatra, further irritating RJD leadership. The alliance partners' realisation that this was not benefiting them became increasingly apparent.

The Fatal Misstep

Communist Party of India Liberation's National General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya subtly criticised the yatra's approach, suggesting Rahul Gandhi should have emphasised walking over vehicle travel. For Bhattacharya, the yatra should have been about ground-level initiative. For Gandhi, it was about media outreach and creating content for other states through compelling photos and videos.

Meanwhile, RJD grew frustrated watching Gandhi receive more media coverage than Tejashwi Yadav. This imbalance would inevitably complicate seat-sharing negotiations. The underlying tension was simple. While Congress wanted to shed its image as RJD's junior partner nationally, RJD wanted to maintain senior partner status in Bihar.

But the most critical oversight was Congress leadership's failure to recognise they were travelling through Bihar on RJD's organisational strength, a cadre that did not enjoy a good reputation, especially among women voters. Various analysts noted the conspicuously low women's participation in the yatra. In this volatile environment, any untoward incident had the potential to explode.

The Darbhanga Disaster

That explosion came on 4 September 2025, when Mohammad Rizvi alias Raja used a Congress platform in Darbhanga to abuse Prime Minister Modi and his late mother, Heeraben Modi. Rizvi, a resident of Singwara village with a history of mental disturbance and previous arrest for bestiality, had apparently infiltrated the event without authorisation.

The timing could not have been worse. Modi was in China attending the Shanghai Cooperation meeting. Congress and alliance partners quickly distanced themselves, clarifying that Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, and Tejashwi Yadav had already left for Muzaffarpur when the incident occurred. They described Rizvi as an anti-social element who entered without approval.

But damage control proved impossible. Rizvi's religious identity became politically significant given INDI's minority appeasement politics. Darbhanga's reputation as a quasi-headquarters for terror modules, historically operated by Indian Mujahideen terrorists Yasin Bhatkal and Tehseen Akhtar, with traces still visible in sleeper cells discovered by National Investigative Agency operations, added another inflammatory dimension.

For astute political observers, this represented a massive gift from Congress management to the BJP ahead of Bihar elections, where nationalism was already set to be a key catalyst following Modi's promise to avenge the Pahalgam attack from Bihar soil.

The Unravelling

Instead of damage control, alliance leaders chose deflection. Tejashwi Yadav accused Modi of "fake crying" when the Prime Minister expressed emotion about the incident upon returning from China. Other leaders pointed to past BJP statements that could be termed misogynistic, launching social media campaigns highlighting old fault lines.

This response revealed a fundamental misreading of contemporary Bihar politics. Even after more than a decade of pro-women policies, INDI Alliance members failed to understand that respect for women had become absolute and non-negotiable in Indian political discourse. Women voters had evolved beyond community-based voting patterns, prioritising welfare and livelihood concerns.

Nationally, Modi had gained significantly by addressing this electorate's basic needs. In Bihar, Nitish Kumar had been doing the same for two decades through reservations, bicycle schemes, education initiatives, and social security programmes. His longevity in power was largely attributable to women's support.

For women voters, the Modi-Nitish partnership represented stability and progress. When faced with dissatisfaction, Kumar had recently announced new initiatives. These included the Chief Minister Women Employment Scheme providing ₹10,000 initial support and up to ₹2 lakh after six months, raising monthly assistance to ₹1,100 for widows and elderly women, and ensuring 35 percent quota for women in government positions.

These were momentum-changing announcements that INDI Alliance failed to counter effectively.

The Hollow Finale

The symbolic end came at Gandhi Maidan on the yatra's final day. Congress had entrusted RJD with gathering at least one lakh supporters for the grand finale. Instead, the junior partner nationally demonstrated its senior status in Bihar by delivering barely 10,000 attendees.

For an average woman voter, two contrasting images would define the choice ahead. One was a stage shared by Nitish Kumar and Modi conveying stability and assurance. The other was a stage shared by Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav evoking unease, particularly shadowed by incidents like Darbhanga.

The yatra that began as Congress's most serious Bihar initiative in a decade had become a study in self-sabotage. What started as an opportunity to expose "Vote Chor" had ended with Congress losing the narrative completely, its SIR campaign forgotten amid controversy, its alliance relationships strained, and its organisational weakness exposed.

The 4 September BJP bandh, largely successful with strong women's participation, provided the perfect counter-narrative. While Congress struggled to distance itself from the Darbhanga incident, the BJP successfully communicated that Bihar's people rejected disrespect toward the Prime Minister's family.

In the end, Congress had punctured not just its SIR narrative, but its credibility in Bihar politics. The party that had come to expose vote theft had instead demonstrated why it remained, as Prashant Kishor had observed, merely the tail of RJD, and an ineffective one at that.