ITS vote chori campaign may have found little resonance in the campaign but the Congress Friday, down to six seats in Bihar from 19 — its ally RJD with 25 seats at its lowest in 15 years — invoked it again, this time to explain the NDA landslide.However, reflecting the disquiet within, different leaders sent out divergent messages.AdvertisementAICC communications head Jairam Ramesh said the results show “vote chori on a gigantic scale” but Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge steered clear of making any mention of this and Rahul Gandhi stopped short saying the elections were anyway not “fair” from the start.“Without doubt the election results in Bihar reflect vote chori on a gigantic scale — masterminded by the PM, the HM, and the Election Commission. The Indian National Congress renews its resolve to continue with even greater strength its campaign to protect the Constitution and save our democracy,” Ramesh said.Minutes later, Kharge said the Congress “respects” the mandate given by the people and vowed to “continue our fight against those forces that are engaged in weakening democracy by misusing constitutional institutions.”AdvertisementHe said the party will conduct a “thorough study” of the results and “will continue the struggle to save the Constitution and democracy by remaining with the people.”Gandhi, on the other hand, said the result was “startling” and that the alliance could not emerge victorious in an election “that was not fair from the very beginning.”These responses only betray the confusion in the Congress and, more broadly, the Opposition, now back to the drawing board a little over a year after it had ensured that the BJP was down to 240 forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to depend on allies for the first time.The question they are staring at is almost existential: how to craft an effective narrative that counters the one scripted by the BJP and its allies who have blended wider caste coalitions, varying interpretations of Hindutva, and election-eve tweaking of welfarism that only an incumbent can.As was seen in Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi (the solitary victory for the JMM-Congress alliance in Jharkhand notwithstanding), the Opposition has floundered.In Maharashtra, the BJP combine won 230 of the 288 seats – the BJP’s strike rate was almost 90 per cent. In Haryana, the BJP created history retaining power for the third time in a row. In Delhi, the BJP returned to power after nearly three decades getting 48 of the 70 seats, a five-fold jump in its seat tally.Now it’s Bihar.The NDA’s landslide victory, cutting across regions, gender, age and caste, punctures many of the narratives of the Opposition, especially that of the Congress. Rahul’s aggressive vote-theft campaign, the party’s rediscovery of the social justice plank with focus on the OBC and Dalits, and repeated charges of democratic backsliding found hardly an echo in the booth.The story of the debacle of the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar isn’t that different from that in other states.There was no coherent narrative. The Congress focused its attention on SIR and vote theft. Tejashwi Yadav put employment at the heart of his campaign. The joint campaign was only in name as in Maharashtra, where the Congress did not allow the Maha Vikas Aghadi to announce Uddhav Thackeray was the CM face.“Blaming the defeat on the Jeevika Rs 10,000-cash transfer scheme alone is a self-serving reading. After all, the BRS and YSRCP lost elections in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh after bankrupting the state with welfare schemes or doles,” said a senior Congress leader on the condition of anonymity.“Our governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh were voted out despite rolling out doles. Cash transfer can be one of the factors. People believed Nitish Kumar would be able to continue the scheme with the help of the BJP Central government. The RJD’s promise of a job was appealing but many here are politically savvy, they weren’t sure of delivery. Also, Tejashwi had a huge baggage of jungle raj and so did Rahul whose campaign was miles away from real issues and failed to connect. That also we should look into.”That said, several Congress leaders and some from other Opposition parties said cash transfers on the eve of elections did skew the playing ground.Another Congress leader said Gandhi’s over-reliance on the SIR and vote theft campaign was misplaced. “It was never an election issue. I am not saying we should not raise the issue but it is certainly not an issue on which we can fight elections. And his track record also doesn’t impress. Remember the chowkidar chor hai campaign of 2019. It had no resonance but he kept at it and then abandoned it after the Lok Sabha elections. Now it is vote chori. I don’t know how long he will continue doing this…”“The talk in the party was that 65 lakh votes were deleted in the SIR process. But we did not see even 65 people protesting,” he said.“Somebody has to take responsibility. We can’t outsource both strategy and ideology. That will be the final undoing of the Congress. Clueless individuals are guiding the discourse leading to defeat after defeat,” another leader said.The Congress’s social justice plank also rang hollow. Caste census was not an issue as the state, under Nitish, was the first to conduct a caste enumeration. As it is, the demand for a caste census had lost its potency after the central government decided to hold a caste headcount along with the Census.“We are never connected with the real issues… you can’t just be abusing Modi and hope to turn the tide. I think we now get only the votes of those ideologically against the BJP and the RSS, this is what is keeping the opposition afloat. But for that, we would have sunk long back,” one leader said.Talking to reporters, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said the Congress performance was “seriously disappointing” and called for “some very serious introspection, not just sitting and thinking but studying what went wrong, what were the tactical, messaging or organisational mistakes.”most readHe said the Congress should do a “very serious analysis of where things went wrong…” His party colleague and Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar results are a “lesson” for the Congress and its allies. “It is a lesson to us. I think in the future we will work out a new strategy for the Congress party and the INDIA bloc,” Shivakumar was quoted as saying by the PTI.Echoing Ramesh, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the “game” carried out through the SIR in Bihar will no longer be possible in other states like Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh as the “electoral conspiracy” has been exposed and the opposition would stay vigilant.NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule said the “massive one-sided mandate” came as a surprise to everyone but pointed out that the victory belongs to Nitish Kumar. A Shiv Sena (UBT) leader, on the other hand, pointed fingers at the Congress. Ambadas Danve said the Congress seeks a large number of seats during seat-sharing talks with allies, but fails to win most of them, which ultimately impacts the overall performance of the alliance.