Opinion | From Fear To Law: Amit Shah’s Police Reforms Deserve Spotlight In Poll-Bound Bihar

In poll-bound Bihar, a phrase that is often heard when reporters put microphones to common people in the hinterlands is that they don’t want a “pre-2005 scenario again”. Most of these memories revolve

around the law-and-order situation in that era. As strange as it may sound, Bihar must be the only state in India where the electoral narrative for the last two decades has been defined in “pre-2005” and “post-2005” terms—the dividing line being the return of governance and order after years of fear and chaos.

In the land of the Magadh empire, where the history of policing goes back almost 2,000 years, it is deeply ironic that the state witnessed a near-collapse of law enforcement between 1990 and 2005. The constant references to “law and order” in Bihar’s political discourse today reflect how severe the pre-2005 decay was and how far the state has travelled since then. As election fervour returns, much attention will inevitably fall on governance, caste equations, and welfare promises, but law and order continue to silently shape the voter’s mind.

The first laurels to Nitish Kumar’s 2005 NDA government came in the form of improved law and order. As chronicled in a series of articles, Bihar in the 1990s had become one of India’s most lawless states—a hub of kidnapping, land grabs, contract killings, and mafia dominance. When Nitish Kumar assumed power in 2005, he inherited a state where the protector had turned tormentor. His first order was simple but revolutionary: every FIR must lead to a chargesheet within 90 days. Within five years, over 54,000 criminal convictions followed—a landmark shift for a state long accustomed to impunity.

Nitish’s partnership with reform-minded officers like Abhayanand and Afzal Amanullah was pivotal. Abhayanand’s conviction-based policing, focusing even on small but easy-to-prove firearm possession cases, led to a surge in convictions under the Arms Act from just 29 in January 2006 to over 25,000 by 2008. These swift convictions restored public confidence and struck fear into habitual offenders. Dacoity, robbery, and kidnapping rates fell dramatically by 2008. Simultaneously, the state encouraged surrenders, created the State Auxiliary Police (SAP) by recruiting trained ex-servicemen, and set up fast-track courts for politically powerful criminals, including those from Nitish’s own party. That impartiality became Bihar’s turning point.

In the following years, Bihar’s law and order occasionally faltered, but successive administrations were careful not to let the state slip back into the pre-2005 abyss. That resolve found strong reinforcement from New Delhi after 2014, when Union Home Minister Amit Shah began pushing a new architecture for police modernisation and criminal law reform across India. Shah’s initiatives, often underappreciated in public debate, have had a decisive influence on Bihar’s policing landscape.

Through the Police Modernisation Scheme, Bihar Police received central funding for forensic labs, cybercrime units, and training infrastructure. The Centre’s emphasis on technology adoption—including the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS), the Inter-Operable Criminal Justice System (ICJS), and predictive policing software—began transforming Bihar’s largely manual law enforcement into a more data-driven institution. Under the Smart Policing Mission, the Centre promoted the concept of people-friendly but tech-enabled policing, emphasising better grievance redressal, 24×7 control rooms, and online citizen portals. Bihar became an early adopter of such platforms among large, low-income states.

Perhaps the most transformative shift has come through the three new criminal laws that replace the colonial-era IPC, CrPC, and Evidence Act. The new laws—the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA)—reflect our cultural ethos. These laws modernise definitions of offences, strengthen the framework for cybercrime and women’s safety, and make provisions for digital evidence, video-recorded trials, and time-bound investigations. These reforms are particularly meaningful for states like Bihar, where case backlogs and evidentiary loopholes historically allowed criminals to evade justice. These reforms have also been supported by a massive infrastructural push on the ground.

Bihar currently has a 1.1 lakh-strong police force compared to 42,000 in 2005. The number of police stations has increased from 817 to 1,380 in the same period. The police vehicles, which were once a subject of ridicule for being non-functional or failing to start on time, are now a thing of the past. The state currently boasts a fleet of over 12,000 SUVs and off-road vehicles. The Bihar Police Department has also become a mascot of gender inclusion, with 35 per cent of the seats in the police force reserved for women.

The India Justice Report 2025, published by the Tata Trusts and Centre for Social Justice, offers objective validation of the progress made by all these steps combined. Among large states, Bihar has shown the most improvement in police and judicial services over the past three years. The report highlights significant progress in police infrastructure, housing, and training; a reduction in vacancy rates; improved representation of women officers; and faster case disposal rates in subordinate and fast-track courts. Most notably, Bihar’s overall crime rate, adjusted for population, remains below the national average—a statistic few would have believed possible two decades ago.

Even in cases of high-profile or daylight crimes, such as the Gopal Khemka or Paras Hospital murders in the first half of this year in Bihar, the police acted swiftly to nab the killers and the planners within 48 hours. Of course, challenges endure. Bihar’s police-to-population ratio is still lower than national norms. Political interference has not vanished, and cybercrime is an emerging threat. Rural police stations continue to face infrastructure shortages. But despite these hurdles, the institutional capacity of Bihar’s police is no longer in question. What was once a reactive, caste-entangled system now operates with a measure of professionalism that is both visible and measurable.

As Bihar heads toward another election, Amit Shah’s claim that the NDA pulled Bihar out of “Jungle Raj” is not mere rhetoric. His central policies—criminal law reform, modernisation funding, forensic expansion, and uniform SOPs—have reinforced the state’s efforts to preserve its post-2005 order. As political slogans return to the campaign trail, this quieter revolution in policing deserves more space in the public imagination. If Jungle Raj was Bihar’s nadir, then Smart Policing may well be its redemption story.

The synergy between Nitish Kumar’s early enforcement drive and Amit Shah’s national reform blueprint has given Bihar something rare in its political lexicon: continuity. And in a poll-bound Bihar, that continuity—the right to live without fear—may be the most powerful campaign message of all.

The author is a BJP leader and author of ‘Broken Promises: Caste, Crime and Politics in Bihar’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.