The yatra knit the alliance's frayed threads, granting pan-Bihar spotlights to niche players like the Vikassheel Insaan Party, usually hemmed to pockets.
Published Sep 13, 2025 | 6:10 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 13, 2025 | 8:09 PM
Rahul Gandhi's Voter Adhikar Yatra was a clarion call against "vote chori" and the Election Commission of India's (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Synopsis: In a landscape scarred by migration, unemployment, and welfare deficits, the yatra’s resonance—or lack thereof—could tip the scales in a poll projected as neck-and-neck, with NDA hovering at 40-45% vote share and INDIA clawing back through alliances.
As Bihar is set for its 2025 Assembly elections slated for October-November, the Voter Adhikar Yatra has crystallised a deepening crisis in India’s democratic machinery.
Launched by the Indian National Congress (INC) and the INDIA bloc from Sasaram on 15 August 2025 the 16-day, 1,300-kilometre odyssey spanned 25 districts, culminating in a padyatra in Patna on 1 September.
Led by Rahul Gandhi alongside Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav—and joined in its final leg by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav—the yatra was no mere procession. It was a clarion call against “vote chori” (vote theft) and the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The Opposition has accused SIR of engineering disenfranchisement to prop up the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
These allegations, reverberating from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to state battles in Maharashtra and Haryana, paint a picture of systemic sabotage: over 6.5 million names—disproportionately from Dalit, Muslim, and Extremely Backward Class (EBC) households—purged from Bihar’s rolls under SIR, ostensibly to weed out duplicates and the deceased.
The Supreme Court, in August 2025, mandated the ECI to disclose these deletions booth-wise, a rare judicial nudge amid cries of opacity. Yet, investigations reveal persistent anomalies—ghost voters, mismatched photos of the dead, and near-duplicate entries numbering in the tens of thousands—exposing the fragility of electoral safeguards in a state where 2020’s verdicts hinged on slivers of margins.
A post-yatra impact assessment by People’s Pulse Research Organisation offers a ground-level autopsy of this mobilisation. Tracking the yatra‘s pulse across its serpentine route, the survey illuminates Bihar’s political fault lines: where caste loyalties clash with cries for integrity, and charismatic interventions grapple with entrenched inertia.
In a landscape scarred by migration, unemployment, and welfare deficits, the yatra‘s resonance—or lack thereof—could tip the scales in a poll projected as neck-and-neck, with NDA hovering at 40-45% vote share and INDIA clawing back through alliances.
People’s Pulse deployed two teams to shadow the yatra, stratifying locales by recency: sites hit 1-2 days prior for fresh recall, and those 5-7 days out to test endurance. Employing systematic proportionate random sampling, the exercise balanced demographics—age, gender, education, rural-urban splits, and pivotal castes per assembly constituency—ensuring a mosaic reflective of Bihar’s kaleidoscopic social fabric. The canvas stretched across districts like Katihar, Purnia, Bhagalpur, Munger, Lakhisarai, Nawada, Gaya, Aurangabad, Sasaram, Chapra, Siwan, Gopalganj, West and East Champaran, Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga, Madhubani, Supaul, and Araria. Assembly segments under scrutiny included Katihar, Kadwa, Purnea, Bhagalpur, Munger, Lakhisarai, Nawada, Gaya, Aurangabad, Sasaram, Ara, Chapra, Siwan, Gopalganj, Bettiah, Motihari, Sitamarhi, Darbhanga, Supaul, and Araria, inter alia.
Through sentiment mapping and unstructured dialogues in village squares and urban fringes, the survey captured raw pulses: yatra perceptions, thematic uptake, and electoral portents. This granular method counters the abstraction of macro-polls, which often gloss over caste calculus and local discontents, revealing instead a polity where democratic rituals are both ritual and rupture.
Bihar’s heartlands embraced the yatra with fervor, respondents recounting swelling, organic crowds—mostly locals forgoing wages to glimpse Gandhi and Yadav. From dusty rural hamlets to teeming towns, it evoked a “celebration,” stirring echoes of the Gandhi-Nehru era amid Congress’s long eclipse.
“Congress flags waving like in decades past,” one cadre noted, a motif echoed statewide, invigorating INDIA’s foot soldiers from Left fringes to RJD’s core.
The yatra knit the alliance’s frayed threads, granting pan-Bihar spotlights to niche players like the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), usually hemmed to pockets. Rahul’s aura magnetised Dalits (barring Paswans) and Muslims, framing him as their bulwark—a UP redux where his 2024 interventions swelled non-Yadav OBCs.
Tejashwi, the local lodestar in Yadav bastions, burnished RJD’s edges, diluting its “rogue” tag among skeptics. Collateral damage? Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj, peddling anti-migration panaceas, saw its buzz wane; polls peg it as a spoiler, nibbling NDA in EBC belts while glancing off INDIA’s flanks.
Yet, execution faltered under the yatra‘s ambition. Hectic itineraries bred delays; convoys blurred past expectant throngs sans halts, branded a “race” by the jilted.
In Bhagalpur’s Tetri village—where Gandhi overnighted—locals lamented zero interface. Sultanganj’s abrupt reroute, Munger’s skipped Ambedkar statue unveiling, Araria’s midnight dart: such slights bred bitterness. Sheikhpura’s no-show, folklore-tinged as “Gandhi-cursed,” amplified gripes.
These snags underscore Bihar’s logistical quagmire—pockmarked roads, teeming densities—beseeching sharper choreography for opposition’s arsenal. As X chatter post-yatra laments absent follow-ups, the momentum risks dissipation.
Core indictments—vote chori via SIR—struck partisan chords. INDIA faithful, Muslims and Yadavs foremost, hailed them authentic, though mechanics eluded most. Detractors, NDA-leaning, waved them off as contrivance. The ECI parries: SIR purges rot for pristine rolls, urging pre-poll flags from parties; deletions, it insists, target absentees, not adversaries. But national echoes—Maharashtra’s duplicates, Haryana’s ghosts—erode faith; integrity now vies with jobs and roads as voter lodestars. In Bihar’s knife-edge arithmetic, even marginal deletions could cascade.
The yatra stirred spirits but not seismic shifts. No fresh castes defected to INDIA; loyalties ossified. Kurmis, EBCs, and JEEVIKA-empowered women cleaved to Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), crediting welfare webs. BJP clutched upper castes and Baniyas; Paswans, Chirag’s fief. INDIA’s bedrock—Muslims, Yadavs—held, VIP snaring Bind-Mallahs in Champaran nooks. BJP diehards scorned Nitish yet lionised Chirag, fissuring NDA seams. Kushwahas splintered: south for INDIA, north aloof. EBC openness flickered, but NDA’s caste heft endures, per projections.
Amid this stasis, tickets loom large. Equitable allocations could lure EBCs, emulating Akhilesh’s 2024 PDA pivot in UP—curbing Muslim-Yadav dominance for broader nets. But Yadav trims court RJD mutiny; Tejashwi’s grip, unlike Akhilesh’s, frays sans core concessions.
As polls loom, the yatra endures as sentinel: a reminder that Bihar’s ballot, in India’s vast democracy, demands not just vigilance but reinvention. Lest “vote chori” morph from slogan to sabotage, the opposition must bridge optics and overhaul, lest systemic shadows eclipse the people’s writ.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
