The prime minister, Narendra Modi, elicited a good response from the crowd at Muzaffarpur when he interpreted 'RJD' as 'rozana jungle raj ka dar' (the daily fear of jungle raj). Yet it appears that Lalu Prasad, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, remains unperturbed by such barbs. This is because he hopes that such remarks would help consolidate his votebank.

Neither Lalu Prasad nor Rabri Devi has ever been apologetic about such epithets. While addressing an election rally in Ambika Bigha village in Nawada district in February 2000, Rabri Devi had roared: " Kehta hai jungle raj hain. Haan hai. Jungle mein ek raja hota hai aur sab kuch thik thak rahta hai."(They say that there is jungle raj in Bihar. Yes it is there. In a jungle, one king lords over all and everything remains alright).

Not only was she hitting out at the Bharatiya Janata Party and other political rivals but she was also indirectly referring to the Patna High Court's observation about 'jungle raj' that was made a few days after she became the chief minister after her husband went to jail in 1997.

She projected Lalu Prasad as the king of the jungle whom everyone obeys. When Rabri Devi uttered these words, the crowd, which had gathered to listen to her speech, had cheered her lustily.

Rabri Devi had led the RJD to victory on that occasion, albeit with a reduced margin. The party had to seek the support of 25 Congress MLAs to form the government. Yet, the RJD's electoral performance was credible because in the Lok Sabha election held only five months before the party had been swept away by the Kargil wave. The National Democratic Alliance had won 41 of the 54 seats in the then undivided Bihar. Thus jungle raj had made an impressive comeback to the state.

The trend continued. In the Lok Sabha elections of 2004, the RJD-LJP-Congress alliance won 29 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in truncated Bihar. But this result was preceded by another Patna High Court observation about jungle raj that was made just three months before the elections.

The RJD's downfall started a year later when the 'king' of the jungle went on to become the railways minister. He might have brought some mega-rail projects to Bihar and introduced a number of trains. But the party machinery crumbled as the king had become over-ambitious and complacent. The anti-incumbency factor, too, worked against the RJD and ixt was voted out of power in 2005.

Jungle raj ended, but only to return later. When Nitish Kumar sacked 11 BJP ministers from his cabinet and snapped ties with its ally in 2013, leaders of the saffron party hurled all kinds of allegations against Kumar, especially during last year's Lok Sabha election campaign. Kumar was accused of being dictatorial, inefficient, corrupt and as someone who opposed development. But even during this period - June 2013 to May 2014 - BJP leaders did not equate Kumar's rule with that of jungle raj.

But all that changed the moment he resigned after Narendra Modi's victory. Jitan Ram Manjhi was appointed chief minister, leading to a change in the BJP strategy. As the RJD decided to lend support to Kumar, the BJP re-discovered the old slogan and termed the new government as Jungle Raj II.

Manjhi was dubbed as a stooge. Sushil Kumar Modi even demanded his arrest once. But when Manjhi started to display signs of dissent, the BJP changed its stand again. It suddenly stopped calling Manjhi's regime as Jungle Raj II, even though the RJD was still supporting the government and the law and order situation had taken a turn for the worse.When Kumar assumed the chief ministership, once again, the chorus of jungle raj rang shrill when a horde of Lalu Prasad's lieutenants - Pappu and Sadhu Yadav for instance - were seen making a beeline for the NDA.
(Courtesy The Telegraph, August 4, 2015)
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