Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Delhi, And Now Bihar: Why Congress Is Fighting Its Allies More Than BJP

Recently, the Indian National Congress (INC) chose Bihar as the locus of its Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting after 85 long years.

The outcomes of the meeting held at Patna’s Sadaqat Ashram confirm that the state, which provided a platform to arguably two well-documented political experiments, namely the Champaran Satyagraha and the JP movement, is being used by the top INC leadership to signal a reversal in its attitude towards both foes and friends.

Tejashwi Yadav vs Congress

One of the main purposes behind this meeting was to take feedback after Rahul Gandhi’s yatra in Bihar. If its confidence is any indication, the INC believes that the yatra was successful, even though its coalition partners would not agree.

For the partners, the meeting was more about the INC’s intent on intra-alliance collaboration. By withholding its support for Tejashwi Yadav as the chief ministerial face of the Mahagathbandhan (the local name for the INDI Alliance), the INC has added another layer of complexity to the already compromised INC-RJD relationship.

In private conversations, leaders of the grand old party have multiple grievances against Yadav. Firstly, if the INC is seen supporting Tejashwi Yadav as the chief ministerial candidate, the party may lose out on regaining some foothold in the upper-caste vote bank. Secondly, the party is aware of Yadav being accused in 35 cases, most of which involve layered financial complexity similar to the fodder scam.

The tussle between the two parties is certain to be reflected in seat-sharing negotiations. With factors like a better General Election (GE) strike rate and Pappu Yadav, the INC wants to contest more than 70 seats in 2025. On the other hand, the RJD is asking for General and Assembly elections (AE) to be treated separately.

In 2020, the INC turned out to be the weak link as it won only 19 out of the 70 contested seats. However, the communication gap between the high commands of the RJD and INC has given the latter a bit more leverage than its position warrants. On Gandhi’s behalf, Krishna Allavaru, a stern strategist, is handling negotiations.

This tug of war has become a survival tool for the national unit of the party, which is now increasingly vocal about its unwillingness to remain a junior partner in elections. Reporters stationed in the vicinity of the political circle in Bihar note that the INC attempted to take other coalition partners on board, but it did not succeed.

The RJD is also unhappy with the way its 25-year-old ally is conducting rallies and sabhas in areas where it does not have local representatives.

What makes this fight more interesting is that in Bihar, Yadav and his RJD are in direct contest with the INC for command over the Muslim vote bank. Strengthening Yadav would compromise the INC’s expansion attempts in the state, which would reflect poorly on its national expansion plans.

The scuffle is not new, and India’s oldest party has been building muscle memory for it over the last few hundred days.

Even though the INDI Alliance members show a united stand against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the regional-national inequality has been evident in the last few elections where the national party has been ultra-aggressive in its attempt to pin down its regional partners.

Interestingly, this has strengthened the INC’s confidence as well as helped the BJP seize elections in most cases.

Maharashtra

Riding on the confidence of 99 seats it won in the GE 2024, the INC demanded 100 to 115 seats in the AE, while Shiv Sena (UBT) was not willing to contest on fewer than 100 seats. Both locked horns in the first round, which was settled on an 85:85:85 arrangement among the INC, Shiv Sena (UBT), and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), which was satisfied with its share.

After making space for smaller parties in the 33 seats up for grabs, the INC emerged as the ultimate winner with 101 seats, while Shiv Sena (UBT) had to settle for 95 against their demand for crossing the three-figure mark. The unresolved demand on leftover seats persisted until late in the talks, which sent a confusing signal to the cadres as well as the voters of the respective parties.

As a result, the Maha Vikas Aghadi won the elections, but what became apparent was the INC’s lead over Shiv Sena (UBT). Compared to the GE 2024, the INC lost only 16.2 lakh votes, while Shiv Sena (UBT) lost nearly 31 lakh votes.

Haryana

At the start of the talks for the much-anticipated alliance between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the INC, the former insisted on contesting ten seats, one from each Lok Sabha constituency, while the latter was only prepared to concede seven.

In later rounds, AAP showed flexibility, at one point scaling its demand down from ten to five. Instead of rewarding that compromise, Congress hardened its stance by offering only three seats. Moreover, even the seats offered to AAP were not winnable as most were BJP strongholds.

INC negotiators such as Deepak Babaria kept talking about a win-win deal while simultaneously approving the party’s candidates for 66 out of 90 constituencies, even as talks were still underway. Later, senior leaders like Raghav Chadha and KC Venugopal intervened, but they could not bridge the gap as the local unit of the INC refused to compromise.

AAP’s departure did not play a decisive role in the INC’s loss, which was mainly attributed to the party being too complacent, while the BJP came out with clear-cut plans for each seat and strong community mobilisation. For the INC, the decline in the stature of AAP was a positive outcome, later repeated in the Delhi AE as well.

Delhi

In Delhi, the INC established its supremacy by acting as the de facto opposition to the AAP. Congress deliberately fielded senior leaders against AAP’s top brass: Sandeep Dikshit against Arvind Kejriwal, Farhad Suri against Manish Sisodia, and Alka Lamba against Atishi.

In New Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal lost to the BJP’s Parvesh Verma by 4,089 votes, while Sandeep Dikshit received 4,568 votes. In Jangpura, Manish Sisodia lost by 675 votes, with Farhad Suri collecting 7,350 votes. Election Commission data shows that despite the INC securing only 6 per cent of votes, it catalysed AAP’s loss on at least 11 seats, namely New Delhi, Jangpura, Greater Kailash, Malviya Nagar, Badli, Timarpur, Nangloi Jat, Rajinder Nagar, Chhatarpur, Sangam Vihar, and Trilokpuri.

AAP leaders, including Saurabh Bharadwaj and Manish Sisodia, accused Congress of intentionally acting to weaken them, while Congress dismissed the charges.

Jharkhand

In Jharkhand, the intra-alliance turf war played out differently.

In the 2019 AE, Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) contested 43 seats while the INC was allotted 31. This was because they were in opposition, which meant that Soren did not have much bargaining power. JMM won 70 per cent of its seats, while the INC won only 52 per cent.

By 2024, Soren consolidated himself by capitalising on his arrest and established himself as the face of the alliance. For women voters, the Maiyaa Samman Yojana and Kalpana Soren did the heavy lifting. JMM initially pushed for 55 seats, but the INC applied pressure by demanding rotational chief ministers, claiming confidence in securing victory on 30 to 40 seats.

The INC also demonstrated its intent by not even considering the RJD for seat-sharing negotiations. Ultimately, JMM contested 43 while the INC secured 30 seats.

After the elections, many leaders of the INC, who had pushed for more, were not happy with the distribution of ministerial posts. Over the past year, INC leaders have been given a free hand to attack JMM and the Soren government. The internal scuffle continues to give rise to speculation about a possible JMM-BJP alliance.

Power flows from barrel of ideology and institutions

The calibrated aggression seen in the last few elections is rooted in the attempt at organisational revival by infusing enthusiasm among cadres, who tend to be active only on momentous occasions.

Before these pushbacks, the party’s attitude carried the memory and arrogance of being the oldest party, which explains why they treated BJP’s victories in general as well as state elections as more of a lighthouse in the sea.

Even without the INC being in power, the party tends to possess much more control over the Indian psyche than the ruling party. A quick glance at the names of freedom fighters, great leaders, awards, ceremonies, institutions, buildings, and even post-independence reformers reveals that most are traced back to the INC.

Practically, a child will remember an INC leader on 14 November. If he grows up and becomes an accomplished athlete, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award would carry an INC imprint.

Intellectuals may argue whether this is well deserved or not; the public sees institutional stamps as legitimate. The INC’s power flowed from the barrel of its ideological imprint on institutions and the psyche. The party hoped it would sail through after a few elections and that the BJP would end up as a promising starter which could not establish itself.

How INC lost ideological space

However, as it turned out, the INC had miscalculated its stature not only on the ideological spectrum but also on the regional electoral one.

After the rise of regional parties in the 1990s, the INC adapted by shrinking itself merely to stay in the game. It was a pragmatic choice since most of its established vote banks had moved to alternative options.

In Uttar Pradesh, Congress’ OBCs, Scheduled Castes, and Muslim vote banks shifted to the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in the aftermath of Mandal politics and caste-based mobilisations.

In Bihar, first Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD and later Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) consolidated Muslims and large sections of backward votes, while upper castes shifted to the BJP.

In West Bengal, Congress’ Muslim, Dalit, and rural poor base moved first to the Left Front and then almost entirely to the Trinamool Congress, leaving Congress without a reliable social bloc.

In Odisha, the tribal and Dalit vote bank that once identified with Congress realigned with Naveen Patnaik’s BJD.

In Delhi, where Congress ruled for 15 years under Sheila Dikshit, its lower middle-class and minority support swung en masse to the Aam Aadmi Party after 2013.

In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the rise of the TDP, BRS, and YSR Congress cut into Congress’ Reddy, SC, and minority base.

In Karnataka, Congress lost substantial Vokkaliga and some Muslim support to the JD(S), though recent contests have seen it claw back ground in Old Mysore at the JD(S)’s expense.

In Tamil Nadu, the consolidation of OBC, SC, and rural voters under the DMK and AIADMK since the 1970s reduced Congress to a marginal player.

With these losses, the INC had already started conceding its historical and social icons to newly emerging players, such as Ambedkar to Dalits instead of Gandhi’s call for Harijan. The Ambedkarite assertion of rights became the rallying cry. The OBC space was conceded to Karpoori Thakur, Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Lalu Yadav among others.

In South India, leaders like MGR and Jayalalithaa eclipsed Gandhi or Nehru in popular Tamil memory. Andhra Pradesh wove itself around N. T. Rama Rao’s statues and Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s welfare politics, while Telangana’s story is more about K. Chandrashekar Rao and the martyrs of the statehood movement.

Amidst these regional churns, the INC conceded an easy victory to the BJP in 2014, which set the base for ideological compromises in national politics.

Ten years later, Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose have been increasingly invoked by the Left and the BJP as their own ideological ancestors. Along with Bose, Sardar Patel is another Congressman who has been resurrected after being sidelined for decades.

Nehru, the most visible symbol of post-independence India, is also being critically evaluated instead of being revered, while schools and textbooks have begun to celebrate scientists, technocrats, and reformers without tying them back exclusively to the Nehruvian framework.

At the current juncture, achievers associated with the INC are not accepted at face value, while at polling booths the party can claim its command only over Muslim votes, which at best makes it a vote-cutter party everywhere.

The necessity of revival

The question is about survival in the long term, which does not necessarily mean defeating the BJP in the short run. The INC has the choice of risking elimination by going full throttle against the BJP, or it can try to re-establish its control over regional vote banks that have been taken by regional parties.

Contesting the BJP would mean that it has to keep obliging as a junior partner in states, which further diminishes its stature, especially after conceding 90 elections to the BJP and its allies. This is simply a point of diminishing return.

Additionally, such compromises have long-term demoralising effects on the cadre. The INC must pragmatically claw back to its old vote base, which would entail fighting its own partners in the alliance, since they control it in scattered form.

Effectively, instead of placing too much emphasis on changing minds about the establishment (BJP), the INC has found it easier to seek those voters who are anti-establishment but whose allegiance currently lies with its alliance partners.

In other words, reclaiming lost vote share from regional allies, such as upper castes in Bihar, urban minorities in Delhi, OBC pockets in Haryana, the cooperative sugar belt in Maharashtra, and tribal segments in Jharkhand, offers a more realistic medium-term route to recovery.

Like its coalitions with socialist blocs in the 1960s and 1970s, the INC views the INDI bloc as a temporary arrangement that buys time to strengthen its organisation.

Additionally, the collapse of the Janata Party shows us that an ideologically disparate coalition does not survive the test of time, as seen in recent disputes. Instead of attempting to set up a new chapter in coalition politics with cooperation, the INC seems to be treating its eventual breakdown as a fact of life that must be taken advantage of.

This understanding has helped the party believe that, even though residual, it is the only party in the alliance with a presence across India, just like the BJP. Since the BJP and its ideology are here to stay, it is pragmatic to prepare for the position as one pole of the two-sided ideological battle shaping the country’s politics.

It is now for the Congress to decide whether that pole is defined purely by religion or whether there are more nuances to it.