The withdrawal of the alliance is however not going tothreaten the future of the Rabri Devi government in the state since the RJD with 167 seats has a simple majority in the 324-member Assembly. The state is due for polls in March next year.

Ever since she decided to oppose President's Rule in Bihar last year, Sonia Gandhi had been criticized by many in the party who argued that tying up with a discredited Laloo would spell doom for the party in the state. Laloo's rout in the Lok Sabha elections and his eroding mass base further reinforced this demand.

The end of the alliance sewn up when Sitaram Kesri was party chief is also meant to signal to state units elsewhere that the leadership iswilling to rethink and ``undo its mistakes.''

Officially, though, the alliance's end comes after the recommendation of the Motilal Vora Committee saying that any further association with Laloo would be disastrous for the party, especially with Assembly polls so near. The central committee, which also included Mohsina Kidwai and Santosh Mohan Deb, gave its report at an informal CWC meeting yesterday.

Surprisingly, there was little debate in the CWC as it accepted the report with leaders saying that the writing was clear on the wall: the Congress-RJD alliance had won only 11 of the 54 seats this time, the Congress getting a measly four. Some leaders argued that it was a ``bad decision'' to begin with, since the entire state had opposed the alliance from Day One.

The committee also felt that the high command had completely failed to detect the anti-Laloo wave in Bihar as a result of which the party too was forced to suffer from the anti-incumbency factor.

The committee noted that what had further irkedBihar Congressmen was the high-handed and dictatorial manner in which Laloo got his way in the seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha elections. Despite protests from state leaders, the party high command agreed to contest only 14 of the 54 seats and gave the rest to the RJD, something which state leaders felt was a complete ``sell-out.''

The Cong-RJD alliance was formed in 1997 when Laloo split the Janata Dal. Hoping to benefit from the Laloo magic in a state where it had suffered a near washout, the Congress more than stuck its neck out for the RJD, bailing out the state government in the immediate aftermath of the split.

The alliance remained intact under Sonia Gandhi as well. In the 1998 elections, Laloo offered the Congress 17 seats of which it managed to win five. Later, the party came to the RJD's rescue when the BJP government at the Centre imposed President's rule in Bihar, following the massacre of Dalits at Lakshmanpur-Bathe.