New research finds partisanship to be highly salient in developing democracies, in spite of low party system institutionalization. However, the subject of partisan bias remains underexplored. I test the extent of partisan bias in India, where previous studies have found little impact of informational interventions, but partisanship as a possible mechanism behind this has been uninvestigated. Using survey experiments and observational data, I find performance assessment of the incumbent government to be strongly associated with people’s pre-existing partisan ties. Partisans affiliated with the opposition party significantly downgrade their evaluation of the government upon exposure to negative information, particularly regarding corruption scandals. In contrast, news of ethnic violence has a weaker impact. Importantly, partisans with affiliation to the incumbent remain unmoved irrespective of the subject of exposure. Drawing on observational data collected before and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic reinforces these findings: even pandemic related mortality and administrative mismanagment in this period does not shift attachment to one's own party. These results contribute to an emergent literature on bias outside the developed world, where lower institutional safeguards make the presence of partisan bias all the more worrying.