The ghost of ‘Jungle Raj’ in Bihar: RJD’s albatross and why it continues to haunt Tejashwi Yadav

Lalu Prasad’s party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, lost power in Patna in 2005.

‘Jungle raj’, a catchphrase used to describe the 15-year RJD rule in Bihar from 1990 to 2005 marked by poor law and order situation and alleged misgovernance, marked a comeback ahead of the crucial Assembly polls in the state. Addressing a rally in Siwan district of Bihar during his fifth visit to the state in as many months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the people to vote out those who brought 'jungle raj' to Bihar and “looted” the state.

The BJP earlier in a post on X took a jibe at the RJD poll symbol “lantern”. The post featured a picture of former CM Lalu Prasad Yadav along with a list of crimes associated with the infamous RJD-era "jungle raj", including kidnapping, murder, corruption, loot, ransom, extortion, dacoity, massacre, violence and snatching.

Lalu Prasad Yadav served as Bihar Chief Minister from 1990 to 1997 while Rabri Devi remained CM from 1997 to 2005. In essence, "jungle raj" is a metaphor for a society where might makes right.

The 15 years of RJD rule in the state have often been referred to by his detractors as an era where criminals enjoyed a free run, with kidnappings and extortion rampant. The phrase was popularised by JD(U)’s Nitish Kumar in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2000, and continued to use it in all Lok Sabha and Assembly elections that his party contested, barring the brief periods that he aligned wit the RJD.

On August 5, 1997, during the hearing of a petition, even the Patna High Court used the same phrase to highlight the state of law and order in Bihar.

According to The Indian Express, there were 337 killings, including of 50 Maoists, in over 20 caste killings between 1994 and 2000, while between 2001 and 2004, Bihar recorded 1,527 kidnappings, 411 of these in 2004 alone.

According to a National Crime Records Bureau report, in terms of total incidents of cognisable crimes, Bihar reported 1,17,017 such cases in 1996, 1,17,401 in 1997, 1,16,045 in 1998, and 1,18,648 in 1999.

There have also been reports suggesting that the Lalu government ensured systematic patronage of gangsters such as Mohammad Shahabuddin, Anand Mohan, and Mohammad Taslimuddin.

Journalist Arun Sinha wrote in his book ‘Nitish Kumar and the Rise of Bihar’ that the Lalu regime “represented a culture of loot and larceny with open patronage to miscreants and roughnecks, whose premier symbols were Sadhu and Subhash (Lalu’s brothers-in-law)”.

“Officials at police stations would hesitate to register a complaint against delinquents who had the patronage of one or the other RJD leader...During the Lalu-Rabri regime, wide gaps existed in crime control all along the line: between the commission of the crime and registration of the case, between the registration and the arrest of the investigation and prosecution and between prosecution and judiciary,” wrote Sinha.

IIT graduate Satyendra Dubey (31), working with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and posted to the then prime minister AB Vajpayee's pet project, the Golden Quadrilateral, was murdered on November 27, 2003, in Gaya district.

G Krishnaiyyah, a Dalit IAS officer from Andhra Pradesh, on December 5, 1994, was brutally murdered. While traveling through Muzaffarpur, his car was attacked by a mob participating in the funeral procession of criminal-turned-politician Chhotan Shukla, a close associate of Lalu.

The mysterious deaths of the couple Shilpi Jain and Gautam Singh in 1999 created a political storm in Bihar. Found semi-nude in a car linked to Sadhu Yadav, Rabri Devi’s brother and an RJD MLA, their deaths were declared a double suicide by the police.

Champa Biswas, the wife of B.B. Biswas, a 1982 batch IAS officer serving as director in the state's Labour Department, claimed that RJD leader Mritunjay and his friends raped not only her but also her mother, her two maids, her sister-in-law and Biswas' niece, Kalyani. Twelve years later in 2010 the accused was acquitted

Among the most well-known cases was also the 2002 abduction of three leading Patna doctors in quick succession. The abduction of orthopaedic Dr Bharat Singh had drawn protesters to the streets, and he was eventually released after a week.

Nitish Kumar became the CM for the first time in 2000. The RJD always claimed that the crime rate doubled during Nitish’s regime.

As per the 2004 NCRB data, when Rabri Devi was still in power, Bihar’s crime rate was 122.4 per lakh population. This increased by 34.6 percent to 164.8 in 2019. In 2021, Lalu wrote on X, “Clap your hands and clap your cheek. A total of 1,15,216 cases of crime were reported in the last year of the RJD government in Bihar in 2004, while after 15 years in the Nitish government, the total crime figures in the year 2019 increased to 2,69,096, more than double. Crime doubles yet Good Governance rule?" asked the RJD leader as quoted by ANI.

However, several experts have pointed out how the crime rates during Lalu’s regime remained low as no victims would dare to file complaints and even the police was reluctant to file reports.

In many ways, the burden of ‘jungle raj’ has stuck with the RJD and it is a cross that Lalu’s heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav will now have to bear. Aware of the perception that the mere mention of this phrase evokes, he has tried a course correction, offered an alternate vision for Bihar that aligns more with development as opposed to unbridled corruption. He has even offered an apology.

In at least at two public functions, the Yadav scion said sorry for "misdeeds" during those “jungle raj” years. "Our party was in power at the time when I was just a little boy. I apologize for any misdeed that might have been committed during those years and seek your forgiveness," he said.

Faced with the ruling NDA’s bid to reignite its “Lalu-Rabri jungle raj” narrative in the run-up to the Bihar Assembly poll, the RJD leaders seems to be fully prepared to counter it. He came prepared with books and various reports to respond to Nitish’s perennial rhetorical question against the Lalu-Rabri rule – “2005 ke pahle kuchh tha ji? (Was there anything before 2005?)” in the Assembly in March.

“Nitish Kumar has now become repetitive and predictable. He sounds like a stuck record… But I will tell you what Lalu ji had done for Bihar,” he said while listing out his father’s contribution to the state.