Patna,(BiharTimes): While addressing the BJP national executive in Bangalore its chief Amit Shah dubbed the Nitish Kumar government as Jungle Raj-2. He had not said anything new. The state unit of the party has been saying so for the last so many days.

Union minister Prakash Javadekar quoted Amit Shah as saying: “He (Nitish) has ushered in Jungle Raj Part II and the people of Bihar are against it.”

The BJP has been saying so simply because the minority Janata Dal (United) government had joined hands with Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal.The party always calls the 15-year old Lalu-Rabri regime as the Jungle Raj, therefore, when Lalu decided to support the JD(U) it was natural to call it as Jungle Raj-2.

But it seems that the BJP has missed on the count. Soon after the RJD decided to back the then Jitan Ram Manjhi government in May last year the BJP started calling it the Jungle Raj-2. For full seven months till December last the saffron party continued to address the Manjhi government with the same sobriquet.

The Manjhi government was ruthlessly bombarded with the verbal shells fired by the BJP big guns. Former deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi once even asked for the then chief minister’s arrest and prosecution.

However, it was much later that the BJP realized some merits in Manjhi. Gradually the Jungle Raj-2 tag disappeared and the same leaders started projecting Manjhi as a victim of feudal mindset led by none else but Nitish Kumar.

But the big question is: if the Manjhi government was really Jungle Raj-2 how can the same be applied to the Nitish Kumar government. By that logic it should have been called the Jungle Raj-3. Anyway it is upto the BJP to explain the faux pas.

The concept of Jungle Raj was not coined by the BJP, but was in fact an observation once made by Patna High Court. But courts have used such observreation not only in Bihar, but in different context in different states too. The BJP picked up from here. Then the present chief minister was with the saffron party.

The most ironical thing about it is that many RJD leaders would make light of the very concept of Jungle Raj. For example, in a speech near Gariak in Nawada district on the run up to the state Assembly election in February 2000 the then CM Rabri Devi proudly proclaimed as to what is wrong in the Jungle Raj. In jungle there is only one lion and all the other animlas obey him. There is more sanity and peace in forest than in the civilized world, she claimed.Needless to say whom she was referring to as lion.