Ticket Sale in Bihar Elections.
The collapse of the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar did not come from ideology, caste arithmetic or campaign strategy. It came from something far more basic: the conversion of an election into a marketplace. The moment this became visible to the public, the result was already decided.
The Complete Picture Emerges
The most revealing episode was not from opponents, not from leaks and not from rumours. It came from an RJD worker named Madan Sahu who stood outside Lalu Prasad Yadav’s residence, tore his clothes on the street, rolled on the ground and broke down in front of cameras. His anguish made clear what had been happening inside the party. He claimed that he sold property, postponed his children’s weddings and raised several crores after being promised a ticket, only to be denied when someone else outbid him. He said Lalu himself had promised him a ticket, and that Sanjay Yadav demanded the payment. Whether every detail is true is almost irrelevant. The emotion was real, the humiliation was real and the accusations came from within the house, not outside it.
This event exposed what had been whispered across Bihar. RJD was not selecting candidates. It was selling them. If someone like Sahu was asked for more than two crores for a single constituency, imagine the scale when multiplied across the state. Hundreds of crores may have flowed in. None of it produced a functioning campaign. None of it created booth workers. None of it improved the organisation. The money vanished into private pockets while the party fielded candidates who had bought their way in rather than earned their place.
Historical Pattern
This is not a new disease. BSP collapsed after following the same model. Congress now repeats it in state after state. Ticket buyers do not become effective candidates. They lack legitimacy, they lack social anchoring and they lack loyalty. Their only aim is to recover the money they spent. The pattern is predictable. First the party weakens. Then defeats multiply. Then internal fights begin over the money collected. RJD has now reached that stage. The family is reportedly consumed by disputes not about why they lost but about who controls the funds accumulated through the ticket operation. When a party stops competing for votes and starts competing for cash, the end is assured.
Madan Sahu’s breakdown symbolised the human cost of this system. His protest was not about ideological betrayal. It was about being denied a product he believed he had purchased. Tickets had become commodities, and he felt cheated as a customer. That image of a man on the road grieving over lost money captured the moral emptiness that had taken over the opposition. It was not a political accident. It was the inevitable outcome of a party that treated elections as real estate.
Choice before Voters
This chaos stood in stark contrast to what Bihar voters were seeing from the other side. The NDA transferred money directly into accounts long before the election. It built trust through tangible delivery. Nitish Kumar added a personal record of two decades without using power to enrich his family. Voters did not need speeches to feel the difference. On one side they saw a political coalition demanding crores from candidates. On the other they saw cash in their own accounts. One extracted. The other delivered. The choice required no persuasion.
Visual Media Silence
The media covered parts of this story but avoided the full picture. They reported individual outbursts, isolated scandals and occasional rumours, but they never connected the pattern. Doing so would require acknowledging that Congress had been selling tickets in Haryana and possibly in other states, that BSP had died from the same practice and that RJD had turned the Bihar election into an auction. It would require accepting that the opposition was collapsing under a self-inflicted disease. Instead of confronting that, the media clung to drama, predictions of a close fight, theories of anti-incumbency and their usual analysis built on surface-level narratives. When the results arrived, they acted surprised.
The irony is that voters were not surprised at all. They had sensed the rot long before the cameras did. They saw unfamiliar candidates with no grassroots connection. They noticed the absence of booth workers. They felt that the opposition had no serious structure on the ground. They did not need to know the details of who paid how much. Weak candidates and half-hearted campaigns made the truth obvious. And when the NDA’s direct cash reached their accounts, the contrast turned into a decision.
Family dispute
The internal dynamics of RJD made the situation even worse. Ticket money reportedly flowed to a small circle around Tejashwi Yadav. After the landslide defeat, murmurs grew louder that others in the extended family were unhappy about not receiving their share. The post-election quarrels were not about rebuilding or identifying strategic mistakes. They were about who controlled the money. The party’s future was reduced to a dispute over loot.
When viewed nationally, the picture becomes even clearer. The Mahagathbandhan had become a ticket distribution consortium rather than a political alliance. Each party brought its own inventory. Each party monetised it. Each party weakened itself by doing so. Voters punished them collectively. Cohesion does not emerge from corruption. Corruption erases cohesion. The more seats were sold, the more the alliance fractured.
The Verdict
Bihar’s verdict was not simply a rejection of the opposition. It was a rejection of an outdated political model. For decades, parties monetised tickets, divided votes through caste arithmetic, played identity games and raised money through backroom deals. That model reached its limit. NDA replaced it with direct delivery and personal trust. Voters recognised the shift and rewarded it.
The old playbook relied on extraction. The new one relies on credibility. The old playbook rewarded insiders. The new one speaks directly to voters. The old one depends on secrecy. The new one depends on results. When Madan Sahu cried outside Lalu’s house, it was not only his personal tragedy. It was a public demonstration of the collapse of an entire political culture.
The Bihar election did not just expose a scandal. It revealed a transformation. Voters are moving away from parties that sell access and moving toward those that deliver outcomes. The opposition did not lose because of caste equations or lack of enthusiasm. It lost because it treated the election as a market where seats could be bought. NDA treated voters as participants. RJD treated candidates as customers.
In the end, Bihar delivered its verdict with remarkable clarity. One man lost his savings trying to buy a ticket. One party tore itself apart over the money collected. One alliance collapsed under the weight of its own greed. And one government gained the trust of people who saw their accounts credited with real benefits. The difference between these two worlds decided the election.
Madan Sahu’s tears mark the last days of the old system. Bihar’s votes mark the beginning of the new one.