Congress supporters protest against Krishna Allavar and Bihar Congress President Rajesh Ram against Krishna Allavar and Bihar Congress President after Bihar election results at Sadaqat Ashram in Patna on November 21, 2025 | Photo credit: ANI
After facing an electoral debacle in the recently concluded assembly elections, a group of Congress party leaders in Bihar staged a sit-in protest at the state party office at Sadaqat Ashram in Patna and raised slogans against senior party leaders. Leaders of dissident parties were earlier served with notices about their alleged anti-party activities. State Wing President Sarwat Jahan Fatima has resigned from her post in protest against the rejection of a ticket for the Assembly elections.
The protesting Congress party officials were said to be upset over the distribution of tickets in the recently concluded assembly elections, the results of which were announced on November 14. Under the opposition mahagathbandhan (grand alliance), the Congress party contested 61 seats and won only six in the poll. In the last parliamentary elections in 2020, the party contested 70 seats and won 19 of them.
However, Purnea Independent MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav tried to pacify the protesting Congress leaders and reason with them while sitting on the floor of the party office. However, the protesting Congress leaders refused to listen to him and continued to protest against him as well as the top leadership of the state party for “giving party tickets to the wrong candidates in the poll”. Mr Yadav is said to be close to some top party leadership and his wife Ranjit Ranjan is the party’s Rajya Sabha MP from Chhattisgarh. She was also a former Congress member of the Lok Sabha from the Supaul parliamentary constituency in Bihar.
Protesting Congress party leaders were earlier issued notices for their anti-party activities. However, they blamed State Congress president Rajesh Ram, party president Krishna Allavar, senior party leaders Akhilesh Singh, Shakil Ahmad Khan, Ajit Kumar Singh and others responsible for the party’s “degrading poll slurs”. They raised slogans like “ticket thief, leave the seat” and accused the top leadership of the state party of “selling” tickets to candidates to contest the polls.
Among the protesting leaders, former party spokesperson Anand Madhav, who is also among those who have received show-cause notices, said, “I was an old member of the party, but the party leaders were giving tickets to those who were unlikely to win the vote. There are other irregularities as the disciplinary committee consists of only three people, but it was supposed to be five.” Mr. Madhav also alleged that “there were serious allegations of dubious loyalty of some party leaders to the party”.
Meanwhile, State Woman Congress president Sarwat Jahan Fatima resigned from her post on Friday in protest against “denial of ticket to her party and show cause notice against some dissident party leaders”. “I have been in this post for 28 months and I have been trying to encourage women to support the Congress party with the promise that the party will work for their political empowerment, but when the time came, only eight percent of the 61 candidates were given party tickets to contest the polls,” said Fatima.
Published – 21 Nov 2025 22:46 IST
