Bihar Assembly Elections 2025| Will Rahul Gandhi's 'absence' from campaign trail affect Mahagathbandhan's prospects?

Patna: Around one week has been left when the campaigning for the first phase of election in Bihar comes to an end on November 4. The first phase of voting is slated for November 6.

However, former Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has not visited Bihar even once in the last two months, forget addressing a public rally in the poll-bound State.

Rahul was last seen in Bihar on September 1 when he addressed the gathering in Patna after concluding his much-hyped ‘Voters’ Adhikar Yatra’.

“The man who promised to explode hydrogen bomb (by giving further proof of vote theft), is missing from Bihar where all the top leaders, be it Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, several Union Ministers and Opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav have been tirelessly campaigning for their respective nominees,” said JD (U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar.

The JD (U) leader has a valid point in the sense that even Nitish, who is not keeping good health, has been addressing one rally after another to shore up the winning chances of the NDA nominees.

“We too are perplexed over the long absence of Rahul Gandhi from the Bihar battle scene. We saw him making ‘imarti’ (a form of sweets) at a sweetshop in New Delhi. But in Bihar, where he galvanised the party leaders, through his ‘Voters adhikar yatra’, and infused a new lease of life into a moribund Congress, Rahul’s absence for so long may cost the party dearly,” said a senior official of the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC).

Notably, Congress is contesting on 61 seats while the RJD on 143 seats as part of the seat-sharing pact. 

Sources in the Congress say Rahul is reportedly miffed with the way seat-sharing was done in Bihar, besides the way tickets were allotted to the party nominees. “Those who lost by 134 votes were denied tickets, while those who lost by over 30,000 votes were retained,” said Anand Madhav, chief of the Congress research wing, who recently quit the party after levelling charges of “selling tickets at a huge premium”.

“Rahul Gandhi will visit Bihar once the Chhath festival is over. His rally is slated for October 29 at Muzaffarpur, while Priyanka Gandhi is likely to visit the poll-bound State on October 28,” said AICC general secretary KC Venugopal.

Incidentally, Venugopal too has been blamed along with Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru for the mess Congress has created in ticket distribution.