After the NDA swept back to power in Bihar with 202 seats, the mood inside the RJD headquarters was a mix of disbelief, anger and internal churn.
The party, which contested 143 seats and won only 25, rejected the mandate and is preparing to take the legal route, alleging irregularities in the polling process.
“The mandate of the Bihar polls did not resonate with the situation on the ground. Despite the anger of the people towards the government, they have got such a mandate. People and politicians are not able to digest this," RJD spokesperson Shakti Singh said after a meeting of candidates at the party office on Monday.
Senior leader Jagdanand Singh escalated the charge with a sensational claim. “Each EVM had 25,000 votes even before the polling began… and we still managed to win 25 seats,” he said, adding that the situation reflected “where the country is headed”.
Raising concerns about the state of institutions, he asked, “Democracy is an institutional arrangement of the Constitution. And they (NDA) are juggling with the constitution."
The resentment wasn’t limited to the top leadership. Bhai Virendra, who won from Maner, echoed the suspicion surrounding voting machines. “We will seek elections through ballot papers," he said.
Losing candidate Sanjeev Kumar described the result as “unexpected”, adding, "This was not meant to be. We are planning to move a court case after collecting evidence of irregularities."
Kumar said the newly elected MLAs had been told to strengthen booth-level structures and stay connected with local communities.
“About 1.8 crore votes have gone to the INDIA bloc this election, which cannot be ignored," he said, pointing to the opposition’s overall vote share despite the NDA’s massive victory.
What unfolded inside the meeting was more than an election review. RJD workers raised slogans against Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Yadav, a close aide of Tejashwi Yadav, signalling simmering resentment within the organisation.
Yadav attended the meeting along with Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi and other senior leaders. The tensions follow an unusually personal family feud that burst into the open after the poll results.
Rohini Acharya, Lalu Prasad’s daughter who donated a kidney to him, accused members of her own family of humiliating her.
Claiming that she was "cursed at" for donating a "dirty kidney" to her father Lalu Prasad in exchange for money and a party ticket, she wrote on Sunday that "she has been made an orphan".
She urged married women to think twice before making sacrifices for their fathers, saying, “your God-like father if he has a son”.
Her comments came a day after she quit the party and publicly disowned her family. She blamed the RJD’s electoral failure on Tejashwi Yadav’s close aides – “Sanjay Yadav, who hails from Haryana, and Rameez, who is from a political family in Uttar Pradesh”.