Bihar, the infamous state for lawlessness or what is popularly known as jungle-raj, has witnessed an exponential rise in criminal activities in the last few years. In the latest event, a manager of airline major IndiGo was killed in Patna just 2 km away from the chief minister’s residence. Rupesh Kumar Singh, a 44-year-old executive, was shot dead outside the gate of his residence on the evening of 12th December.
BJP, which is in power in the state in coalition with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), tried to shed away the responsibility and blamed it all on Nitish Kumar. In fact, the senior BJP leaders told Nitish Kumar to adopt Yogi Adityanath’s model of policing to check crime. “Take a leaf out of Yogi’s book and ask the cops to gun down the criminals in police encounter,” said senior BJP MLA in Patna, Nitin Navin after he visited the bereaved family.
Another BJP MP, Janardan Singh Sigriwal, echoing similar sentiments, said, “The time has come to kill the criminals in a police encounter.”
Nitish Kumar has kept the Ministry of Home under his office, as do most of the chief minister’s across the country. However, under his leadership, Bihar police have completely failed to check the rising cases of rape, murder, and extortion in the state.
On the other hand, BJP, despite being the senior partner in the coalition government, blamed it all on Nitish Kumar because the Home department is with the chief minister.
As per state crime record bureau (SCRB) data, Bihar has witnessed a record number of murder and deaths in the last 9 months. The total number of registered deaths and murders in the state is 2,406 and 1,106 respectively, in the first 9 months of 2020.
The leader of opposition in state assembly Tejashwi Prasad Yadav tweeted, “Hundreds of killings, loot, kidnapping and rapes are the achievements of BJP-Nitish Kumar government in the state.”
Read More: So much for the much advertised Sushasan – NCRB data proves that Bihar is still living in Jungleraj
Nitish Kumar, very often during his campaign as well as during general interaction with the media, used to take a dig at Lalu Yadav’s jungle-raj. In fact, the fear of jungle-raj if RJD comes back to power was the major theme of Nitish Kumar’s party’s camping during the 2020 assembly election. However, the exponential rise in crime rate in the state in the last 5-6 years in giving the leaders like Tejashwi Yadav to show Nitish Kumar mirror.
While Kumar has been able to control crime during 2005 to 2015, his hold over the state’s law and order situation weakened when he allied with RJD in 2015 and ran the government in alliance with Lalu Yadav’s party for 2 years. Since that, even when he left RJD to come with BJP, the state police has failed to curb the rise in crime records.
The BJP too has much to explain on this count. Why has the BJP been entertaining a political opportunist for so long? Moreover, what’s the point of the BJP being in power along with Nitish in Bihar if it cannot control the crime rate in the state? Political killings remind us of the Lalu era. If the JD(U)-BJP alliance has not been able to overcome that era, it really speaks volumes as to how they have collectively failed the people of Bihar, for which they will soon be held accountable.