Many Riders In The Bihar Election Caravan

In a different era, it would have been a surreal sight considering the sheer range within the Indian political spectrum represented by the protagonists—Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the original party of Dravidian pride, doing a roadshow together with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav and CPI(ML) leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, among others, in poll-bound Bihar on August 27. The picture-perfect moment seemed to be designed to showcase the opposition INDIA bloc as a national family of sorts, united against what Stalin joined the others in denouncing from the campaign pulpit as a “threat to democracy in India”, now summed up in two words: “vote chori” (vote theft).

While political pundits might recall the Delhi polls earlier this year when two key INDIA bloc partners—the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—chose to go solo even at the cost of enabling a decisive BJP win, and suggest the DMK may similarly end up facing off with the grand old party in the Tamil Nadu polls next year, similar concerns regarding RJD-Congress ties are not top-of-the-mind for 55-year-old Yadav waiting on the road linking the district towns Lakhisarai and Munger just to catch a glimpse of Rahul during the Voter Adhikar Yatra that had been flagged off on August 17 at Sasaram.

He joins other villagers who come out of their homes to gather along the streets of Nishta village of Lakhisarai district’s Surajgarha subdivision to welcome the 16-day yatra, which will cover a distance of 1,300 km through 50 assembly constituencies spread across 20-odd districts before culminating on September 1 with a rally at Gandhi Maidan, Patna. The majority of Nishta’s villagers are Yadav with a long tradition of supporting the RJD. Refusing to share his first name, Yadav says nothing matters to him more than the issue of “vote theft”. “Without Rahul Gandhi taking it up, this critical matter would not have come to the forefront,” Yadav says.

Drawing many like him to the yatra are fears of disenfranchisement triggered by a controversial intervention of the Election Commission of India (ECI)—the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), an exercise to update the electoral rolls involving inclusion and deletion of names—in Bihar ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls. In an electorate of 78.9 million, 6.5 million names were removed from the state’s voter lists. According to the ECI, the deleted names were of the deceased, the permanently shifted, the absent, the duplicated or the otherwise ineligible. The INDIA bloc parties, however, have alleged collusion between the ECI and the ruling party at the Centre for what they call “vote theft”—manipulation of electoral rolls for partisan ends—and pitched the Voter Adhikar Yatra as an assertion of the rights of voters against such alleged violations.

Yadav asks why the SIR was suddenly implemented now, during the season of floods when many people are homeless or at the places where they migrate for work. “We keep hearing about living people in the neighbouring villages who were removed from the voter list,” he says.

Political Yatars In Elections

Among the crowd gathered in Munger town of the neighbouring district is Raziya, 65, who found her name missing from the voter list despite having voted in the 2024 General Election. She came to see Rahul because she believes his campaign is all about restoring her right to vote. A few people deleted from the rolls as dead or “permanently shifted” appear on stage. INDIA bloc leaders claim at least 50 names of living voters per polling booth have been deleted.

Deputy chief minister Samrat Chaudhary rubbishes the allegations and claims the real problem was “booth capturing” during the earlier regimes, which has been overcome since the end of the reign of Lalu Prasad Yadav (1990-2005). RJD MP Sanjay Yadav counters Chaudhary claiming he overlooked similar issues when he and his father were in the government.

In his speeches during the yatra, Rahul has confidently questioned the central government in front of large crowds, emphasising employment generation, social justice and democratic rights. The turnout suggest a good public response, though how this would translate into votes remains uncertain considering how the Bharat Jodo Yatra of 2022-23 helmed by Rahul failed to help the Congress win the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh elections in the immediate aftermath despite the yatra’s visible popularity and the substantial media coverage it got.

According to political analyst Ashish Ranjan, the Voter Adhikar Yatra has “dispelled Rahul’s image as a passive leader”, with his “aggressive stance on vote theft” preventing the BJP from dominating the discourse in Bihar with Operation Sindoor. Given the narrow margin of contest—around four per cent of votes—between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance), even a slight swing of votes could significantly alter the outcome.

Political experts note the Rahul–Tejashwi partnership is mutually beneficial. The Congress, long weakened in Bihar, is reclaiming relevance through the RJD’s base, while the RJD benefits from Rahul’s national stature. Recently, Tejashwi Yadav endorsed Rahul as a suitable candidate for prime minister. This marks a shift from last year, when Lalu Prasad had suggested West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress for the leadership of INDIA bloc.

A few months earlier, when the RJD clarified that Tejashwi would indeed be its CM candidate, strains had appeared in the party’s relationship with the state Congress unit. By elevating a Dalit as its state chief and putting internal dissent to rest, the Congress sent out a message that it did not intend to remain a “junior partner” of the RJD in Bihar. Around that time, the independent MP from Purnia, Pappu Yadav, was asking for 100-plus seats for the Congress in the alliance. However, now he, too, joins Tejashwi in shouting slogans, indicating an agreement on letting the Congress play a central role.  

While the Congress has organised multiple tours in Bihar since the beginning of the year, the Voter Adhikar Yatra and Kanhaiya Kumar’s ‘Palaayan roko, rozgaar do’ yatra highlight its strategy of addressing the grievances of Dalits, the backward classes and migration-affected communities to reclaim its lost ground. While Rahul’s yatra has brought institutional critiques against the BJP to the national stage, other Congress and RJD leaders have been addressing the issues of employment, education and migration through grassroots padyatras, directly engaging the marginalised communities.

The Voter Adhikar Yatra is also an attempt to expand the Grand Alliance’s outreach beyond Yadavs and Muslims. On October 2, 2023, the caste survey revealed that the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) together comprise 63 per cent of the Bihar electorate, with the EBCs alone accounting for 36 per cent (4.7 million) of the state’s 0.137 billion population. The EBCs today are known to largely support CM Nitish Kumar, which makes the BJP, which has no leader to appeal to this group, rely on him.

Shahabad, Magadh and Seemanchal—the regions traversed by the yatra—have a substantial EBC population and had proved to be strongholds of the Grand Alliance in the 2020 election. The NDA won only two of Shahabad’s 22 Assembly seats and eight of Magadh’s 33, while the Congress is strong in Seemanchal, which has a significant Muslim population. With Stalin making an appearance, the yatra’s impact now transcends Bihar. Analysts suggest that if leaders like the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav also participate, it will bolster the Grand Alliance’s image among the voters of Bihar.

(Md Asghar Khan is senior correspondent from Jharkhand)

Democracy is about ballots, but also about memory—who safeguards both, and who seeks to rewrite them? Outlook’s September 11, 2025 'Election Omission' issue probes these erasures—of voters, voices, and histories—asking what they mean for India’s democratic future. This article appeared in print as 'Many Riders In The Bihar Caravan'.