"Yahan se pachaash- pachaash kosh door gaon mein jab bacha raat ko rota hai to maa kehti hai bete so ja, so jaa nahin to Gabbar Singh aa jayega.”

This immortal dialogue of Gabbar Singh, one of the most popular villains of Hindi cinema, remains firmly etched in our minds.

As Nitish Kumar is applauded for his hard fought and well-earned victory over his rival Lalu Prasad, this dialogue from Sholay comes back to me.

During my visits to Patna prior to the election, I found out, the ‘Gabbar factor’ played on the minds of the urban voters, especially of the upper caste.

While the majority acknowledged the good work done by their chief minister, they were wary of his “deliberate apathy” towards rajputs and brahmins.

His introduction of the bataidarri scheme (making the tillers the owners of the land they worked on) had also not gone down well with them.

So my obvious question to them was, “Would you then not vote for him?”

“Oh no, we will vote for him despite all this apparent disaffection,” they answered.

And pray why?

“Ha! That’s simple, if we don’t, Gabbar Singh will be back in power and we don’t want him back under any circumstances,” they said. It’s obvious who they were referring to.

This sentiment was reflected not just in Patna but all across urban Bihar.

With the humbling of the Yadav supremo in this election (his party RJD was reduced to 22 from earlier 55 seats in 2005 assembly elections), the appellation of one of the most infamous and menacing villains to his name may seem somewhat out of place today.

But only five years back, the same man (as de facto chief minister) was actually the Gabbar Singh of Bihar. His Kalias (read Sadhu Yadav, Lalu’s brother-in-law) and Sambhas (Subhash Yadav, Sadhu’s brother) ruled the state for 15 long years, from 1990 to 2005, and unleashed a reign of terror only matched by villains seen in the Bollywood cinema of the early 90s.

While his close relatives and party workers ran an organised kidnapping industry, his clan ruled the streets with their well-oiled lathis.

Broad-daylight murders and kidnappings for ransom were the order of the day.

Large tracts of land in Patna were captured and occupied (some five acres of land just adjacent to my colony was captured and named Lalu Nagar) by the yadavs who had suddenly descended from the villages across the states.

Thankfully, the reign of Gabbar and his goons ended with the coming to power of Nitish Kumar in 2005. With the ingenious use of the Arms Act his government rounded up and convicted an astonishing 50,000 criminals in the span of five years.

Today, as the JD(U)-BJP coalition has been voted back to power with an unprecedented majority, Gabbar lies decimated, annihilated.

It is certain we will never hear his menacing laughs ever again.