JD(U) supporters at Gandhi Maidan on Sunday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

The Adhikar Rally on Sunday was a political meeting with a difference. There was a huge crowd. Roads were chock-a-block right from the morning. But the “guests” were polite, unlike the rowdy elements of the past.

True, citizens faced problems in travelling. Boarding a train or a plane became a Herculean task in the wake of the rally. But the uncanny fear in the eyes of the Patnaites was pleasantly missing.

For a change, they were not afraid of people attending the rally.

The participants of the Adhikar Rally, despite a massive turnout, remained a disciplined lot. They paid for the food they purchased from vendors.

“In the past, the food of vendors were looted by the rally participants,” said a popcorn vendor.

Narrating his experience earlier in the day, he told The Telegraph: “When I saw a huge crowd from Samastipur district passing by, I tried to pull my cart out of their way. But a rally participant told me: ‘Ghabrao maat, hum tumhara samaan nahi lutenge (Don’t worry, we will not snatch your stuff)’.”

Chief minister Nitish Kumar played a masterstroke in crowd management by giving the responsibility of hosting the rally participants to the party’s ministers and MLAs. They played the perfect hosts at home and away. The idea of making them the hosts appeared to be borrowed from Lalu. But its execution was spot on, unlike the Lalu days.

Several participants checked in to the houses of the ministers and the legislators on Saturday night. They were offered good food and ample space to take rest. But unlike the hosts of the yesteryears, they did not invite dance girls to entertain them.

A lot of thought also appeared to have gone into Nitish’s decision to hold the rally on November 4 — the day police lathicharged Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan in 1974. It was a Sunday. Schools, offices and a large number of business establishments were closed.

“During the previous regime, going to school on the day of a rally was always a risk. Had this rally been held on a working day, most people would have feared to go to their workplaces,” said Namita Haldhar, a retired school teacher of St Michael’s High School.

In the later half of the Lalu-Rabri regime, rogues dominated the crowd. Participants were virtually hired. Even an RJD MLA had slapped the father of an IAS officer when the latter dared to refuse to part with his car for a rally.

Incidentally, apart from a complaint against a former MLA, nobody demanded money for the rally. The difference was palpable on the stage, too. Nitish never wavered from the key subject — “special status to Bihar”. On April 30, 2003, Lalu’s speech during the lathi rally jumped from one issue to another.

Still, there were some lows. During the Lalu-Rabri era, upmarket localities like the Boring Road area used to remain unaffected by the massive rallies. “But today (Sunday), the roads were barricaded. We could not go anywhere,” said Dinesh Kumar, a shopkeeper in the Boring Road area.

Another change!