Bihar election: How Rahul Gandhi tuned Congress' Bihar pitch

PATNA: Until June this year, Congress looked desperate. It first replaced the party’s 74year-old Bihar in-charge Mohan Prakash by a rather young Krishna Allavaru and then appointed Rajesh Kumar, a Dalit face, as state president, removing Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who came from the upper caste Bhumihars. But nothing seemed to make a difference.

Then came EC’s decision to conduct a Special Intensive Revision ( SIR ) of electoral rolls. Congress found a cause, dubbing the exercise as a conspiracy to strike opposition voters off electoral rolls. Congress fused it with its broader claim that all BJP victories since 2014 were facilitated by “vote fraud”. Rahul Gandhi started Voter Adhikar Yatra , invited INDIA bloc big names like M K Stalin and Akhilesh Yadav.
But will it influence voters? One clue comes from the subdued response of Congress and other opposition parties to the final electoral roll published on Sept 30. That reaction was anticlimactic. And this, when SIR did result in the deletion of 0.4 million “ineligible” names from the draft voters’ list. Significantly, even during the Voter Adhikar Yatra, grumbles could be heard about how it pushed “bread-and-butter” issues off centre stage, giving Nitish Kumar crucial time to repair a potential point of vulnerability.

But the Yatra helped Congress acquire a profile it lacked. It upstaged RJD, its senior partner, which had planned to launch its own protest against SIR.

Congress’s enhanced confidence is indicated by its refusal to defer to RJD’s insistence that Tejashwi should immediately be projected Mahagathbandhan’s CM candidate.