Congress 6/61. Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ pitch fails as MGB stares at humiliating loss

The NDA was ahead or leading in over 200 seats at 8 pm, while the Mahagathbandhan stared at a humiliating defeat and was leading in an embarrassing figure of 31 seats. Follow Bihar election results LIVE updates

For the Congress, the trends are particularly sobering. The party not only underperformed in seats it contested but also failed to emerge as a meaningful contributor to the alliance tally, with leads or wins in six of the 61 seats it was fought in.

While the Election Commission of India was still counting votes, trends put the BJP-JDU combine’s leads at a stable 195-plus mark while the Mahagathbandhan of Congress and Tejashwi Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) struggled to even hit half century.

The majority mark in the 243 seat Bihar assembly is 122.

Rahul’s vote-chori pitch fails to woo voters

Despite weeks of sharp rhetoric from Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi and through a series of press conferences, accusing the Election Commission of India of vote theft on the behest of BJP-led NDA, the message seems to have failed to resonate on the ground.

Promising a ‘hydrogen bomb’ of evidence but always stopping short of dropping it, Rahul Gandhi held three press conferences where he levelled, with ‘proofs’, allegations of how the ECI was carrying out vote theft, mass deletion of votes and data manipulation.

In the last press conference, on November 6, Rahul Gandhi claimed to show evidence of a Brazilian model appearing on the Haryana voter list 22 times via different names such as Seema and Sweety.

Rahul Gandhi’s ‘vote chori’ pitch and the energetic social media campaign by the Congress, expected to energise cadre and consolidate anti-incumbent sentiment, appears to have failed to create momentum on the ground.