Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with party leader and LoP in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi during the party's flag hoisting ceremony before the extended Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, in Patna.
Credit: PTI
Patna: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Wednesday asserted that governance in Bihar had “gone for a toss” as the BJP has effectively “mentally retired” Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, treating the JD(U) strongman as a liability.
“The governance in Bihar is on a vacation as the BJP has ‘mentally retired’ Nitish and wants to grab power under the pretext of vote theft. But Rahul Gandhi, who embarked on a fortnight-long Voters’ Adhikar Yatra and made the people of Bihar aware of their rights, will ensure that ‘vote theft’ does not recur in Bihar, as it did earlier in Maharashtra and Haryana,” Kharge said while chairing the first Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting in Patna since Independence.
The last CWC meeting in Patna was held in 1940, attended by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
With the crucial Bihar Assembly polls scheduled for October and November, the Congress decided to convene the CWC in Patna to expand its base and reconnect with its original votebank – the upper castes, Dalits, and Muslims.
However, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka Gandhi were conspicuously absent. Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel clarified that “Sonia ji could not attend the CWC meet due to her health condition.”
Poll bugle
Kharge, while sounding the poll bugle in Patna, said Bihar had always given a new direction to the nation’s politics. “The Bihar polls mark a countdown to the beginning of the end of the Modi Government at the Centre,” he said, taking aim at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his perceived failures in both foreign and domestic affairs.
“The man whom Modi calls his friend has created multiple problems for Indians,” Kharge said, without explicitly naming US President Donald Trump, while highlighting the adverse impact of high US tariffs on India.
“On the domestic front, Modi visited Bihar 10 times this year and 55 times as Prime Minister. He promised to reopen closed sugar mills and even claimed he would drink tea with sugar from them. Yet, not a single sugar mill has been reopened. His promises are as empty as the claim of providing employment to two crore youths,” Kharge added in a no-holds-barred address.
He also questioned why Modi did not support the Bihar government’s legislation on 65 per cent reservation, which was ultimately struck down by the courts. “Under Modi, the country is grappling with economic slowdown, unemployment, rising inequality, and unfulfilled promises, including issues concerning farmers,” Kharge said.
CWC resolutions
The CWC later passed resolutions criticizing the BJP-RSS, accusing them of “relentlessly attacking the Constitution” and systematically eroding the fundamental principles of Indian democracy “brick by brick.”