The Bihar legislative assembly elections were held in two phases—on November 6 and 11—and became a pivotal test for Narendra Modi after his loss of a parliamentary majority at the national level. The campaign unfolded against a backdrop of tense relations between New Delhi and the Trump administration, trade disputes with Washington, and a controversy over updated voter rolls from which 6.5 million names disappeared in September.
Yet despite this turbulence, the outcome was shaped by local issues—social programmes, Nitish Kumar’s political reach and the weakness of a fragmented opposition—culminating in a decisive victory for the BJP-led coalition.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in Bihar was so overwhelming that analysts say it underscored both the scale of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s influence and the vulnerability of India’s splintered opposition. The BJP-led alliance secured 202 of the 243 seats in the assembly—a result long deemed unattainable for the state. The Congress and its partners saw their presence shrink from 110 seats to 35.
The vote came at a challenging moment for Modi, now 75: relations with President Donald Trump had soured first over the settlement of the latest crisis with Pakistan and later amid Russia’s oil purchases. Additional pressure came from 50% US tariffs on Indian goods and stalled trade negotiations. Opponents tried to cast Modi as a weakened leader at home and increasingly isolated abroad.
But in Bihar these arguments carried little weight: the campaign centred on welfare schemes and local political alliances. The election, in which nearly 50 million people participated in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, reaffirmed the durability of Modi’s political project.
“The result has strengthened the BJP government at the centre,” said New Delhi–based analyst Asim Ali. “They’re safe again.”
A crucial factor in the victory was the extraordinary popularity of Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar, with whom the BJP formed a governing coalition after the 2020 elections. For many in Bihar, Kumar is the figure credited with pulling the state out of deep poverty and ending the caste-driven violence that marked the late 1990s and 2000s.
Yet his later years in office were marked by high unemployment, especially among young people who have been leaving the state in large numbers for low-paid jobs elsewhere in India. At 74, Kumar is also grappling with health issues, and opponents eagerly seized on moments of forgetfulness or verbal slips in public, comparing him to Joe Biden during his ill-fated 2024 campaign.
But the attempt to portray Kumar as a leader who has “lost his edge” backfired on his critics. “It generated a kind of sympathy wave,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. “There was a sense that people needed to protect their leader rather than turn away from him.”
The elections also exposed the weakness and fragmentation of India’s opposition, which failed to present a clear and compelling message against Modi’s coalition. “Bihar has no shortage of pressing problems—from landlessness and unemployment to police violence and bureaucratic indifference,” Ali noted. “But no one tried to weave these grievances into a coherent progressive platform.”
Women—nearly half the state’s electorate—played a decisive role, driving turnout to a record 71.6 percent compared with 59.7 percent in 2020. In September, the government transferred roughly $850 million to the accounts of 7.5 million women under a programme supporting small-scale entrepreneurship. The opposition denounced the move as a “bribe,” though the Congress party promoted similar cash-transfer schemes in its own manifesto.
The combination of targeted cash programmes and initiatives long associated with Kumar—from subsidies for girls’ bicycles to measures strengthening safety and law and order—delivered the coalition a clear advantage among independent and politically engaged women, experts say. “The BJP sensed with great precision that the political landscape is shifting, that women are an undervalued and underutilised electoral bloc,” Vaishnav noted.
The vote unfolded amid growing public concern over the state of India’s institutions, including the Election Commission, which ordered a revision of Bihar’s voter rolls. The Commission attributed the chaotic process to the need to verify citizenship, but critics warned that millions of poor residents—often without documents and traditionally supportive of the opposition—risked being disenfranchised. The updated rolls published on September 30 contained 6.5 million fewer names.
The Congress party tried to push the issue to the forefront, organising a march for voting rights in August. In the days before the election, Rahul Gandhi spoke about irregularities in the rolls and warned of a system allegedly tilted in the BJP’s favour. But the issue never became a mobilising force for voters.
“The opposition failed to make a convincing case that the election had been compromised,” Vaishnav said.
The BJP’s triumph offered yet another example of the party’s ability to regain its footing after the unexpected setback in the national elections, when it lost its parliamentary majority and was forced to rely on coalition partners, including Bihar’s JD(U). Over the past year, the party has already won three regional contests, and the result in Bihar again underscored its capacity to withstand international pressure and adapt to the dynamics of individual states.
“Bihar has its own distinct development challenges,” Vaishnav noted. “Which is why national themes—whether India–Pakistan issues or Trump’s tariffs—have little real impact.”