There is bad news for Congress in Bihar. A multinational company hired by the All India Congress Committee to conduct a survey on the party's performance in Bihar gave its report to the party on Thursday evening.
It is learnt that the survey says that the party virtually threw away 22 seats which it could have won since they were given to 'outsiders' who were never part of the Congress but were given tickets this time.
These 22 are part of the 125 seats which the Congress has given to outsiders, while only 118 seats have been given to loyal Congress men and women.
The survey paints a dismal picture for the party which was hopeful of emerging as the balancing factor in a likely hung scenario, but sources say there was gloom in the party after this survey was received.
A number of Janata Dal-United MPs who have fallen out with CM Nitish Kumar have managed to get tickets for their relatives and followers from the Congress and the same applies to the Rashtriya Janata Dal.
This created a situation where the outsiders who had been against the Congress for a long time could not integrate with the party-workers and in return, angry and upset Congressmen decided to deal with the situation in the only way they know, by having these candidates defeated, said a senior Congress leader.
Sources say that the extremely upbeat atmosphere for the Congress over the last six months was vitiated by the all out war between Congress leaders Jagdish Tytler and Union minister Anil Sharma with the leadership remaining inactive and indecisive for 3 months.
The wrong ticket distribution by Mukul Wasnik, the entry of a large number of outsiders into the Congress ticket fold, the Ayodhya set back with the Muslims feeling betrayed and drifting away from the Congress -- the forward Muslims moving towards Lalu Yadav and the backward Muslims towards Nitish Kumar -- and the inability of the leadership to send a positive message to its own workers, all worked to minimize the advantages and gains of the Congress.
Sources say that the ground situation has been so dismal that for general secretary Rahul Gandhi's rally held on Thursday in Muzaffarpur, Samastipur and Sitamarhi, the candidates let out the word that Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was coming and that is how some crowds assembled.
Just some months back Rahul had received, probably one of the biggest welcomes of his political life in Bihar, exceeding all expectation but that advantage appears to have been frittered away.
A senior leader said that one only hopes that the survey proves wrong.
