Bihar Assembly Election 2025: Rahul Gandhi Reaches Patna to Attend Congress CWC Meeting

The BJP has “mentally retired” Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and now regards him a “liability”, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said on Wednesday, in his opening remarks at the meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting held at Sadaqat Ashram, the party’s state headquarters in Patna.

Mr. Kharge said that the upcoming Bihar polls hold significance not only for the State but for the entire country, as they will mark the countdown to the end of the “corrupt” Narendra Modi government at the Centre.

Lashing out at the State government, the Congress chief said the Bihar government was on a “long vacation”.

Accompanied by Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C Venugopal and other top leaders, Mr. Kharge noted the country was facing serious challenges on both domestic and international fronts due to the “failure” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the domestic front as well as in foreign affairs.

Without naming U.S. President Donald Trump, Mr. Kharge mocked Mr. Modi’s relationship with him, saying the leader that the Prime Minister once hailed as his “close friend” had created multiple problems for India.

Turning to domestic issues, the Congress president criticised the proposed nationwide roll-out of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, calling it an attempt to disenfranchise Dalits, Adivasis, Backward and Extremely Backward Classes, minorities, and the poor. He stressed that Mr. Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ had raised awareness in Bihar against “vote theft”.

Seeking transparency

Mr. Kharge emphasised that democracy cannot work without impartiality and transparency by the Election Commission. He added that instead of answering questions raised by the Congress, the poll panel was seeking proof and demanding affidavits.

He took a dig at the Prime Minister for “suddenly remembering” swadeshi, pointing out that Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress had championed the principle more than 100 years ago. “While the PM talks about self-reliance, imports from China have doubled in the last five years,” Mr. Kharge said.

He also said that the Modi government has realised its mistakes on GST after eight years. The Congress had been saying from day one that there should be only two tax slabs, which Mr. Modi had now accepted, Mr. Kharge said. The Congress, he said, had insisted from the beginning on only two tax slabs, an idea the government had finally accepted. He said that “excessive GST” had enabled the Centre to collect an additional ₹23 lakh crore in the past eight years.

Referring to Mr. Modi’s call for greater consumer spending, Mr. Kharge remarked that people need jobs and income to be able to spend more. He said unemployment and inflation were at their worst, while inequality was deepening.

Asserting that the people of Bihar want change, Mr. Kharge said they do not want religious polarisation but progress, employment, and control over inflation.

Mr. Kharge said that Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi could not attend the meeting as she was unwell, but had conveyed her best wishes for its success. The CWC meeting lasted for four-and-a-half hours.

It was 85 years ago that the Indian National Congress session was held in Ramgarh in Bihar in 1940, where the proposal of a Samvidhan Sabha [Constituent Assembly] was moved for the first time, the Congress chief recalled.