CHANDIGARH: In the wake of five Haryana MLAs allegedly receiving threat calls recently, Assembly Speaker Gian Chand Gupta on Monday held a meeting with top brass of the state police and it was decided that they will be protected by four or five additional security personnel.
The Speaker held a meeting with Director General of Police P K Agrawal, Additional DGP, CID, Alok Mittal, ADGP (Law and Order) Sandeep Khirwar and IG (Security) Saurabh Singh.
It was decided in the meeting that four or five additional security personnel would be deployed to protect the MLAs who have received threats, according to a statement here.
He has also asked the officials concerned to conduct a high-level inquiry into the threatening calls and messages received by the MLAs.
The Speaker has also given instructions to review the security of other MLAs.
Haryana has a 90-member state assembly.
State Home Minister Anil Vij had on Sunday said all these calls to legislators are coming from abroad.
Vij said the matter has been handed over to the Special Task Force for further investigation and he is monitoring the developments connected with the probe on a daily basis.
Notably, while one MLA who received threat call is from the BJP, the remaining four are from main opposition Congress and most of the calls pertain to extortion threats made over mobile phones of the legislators from unknown numbers.
Speaker Gupta said those who threaten to kill the elected representatives of the people are directly challenging the democratic system.
He said that MLA is not just a person, but he or she is the representative of lakhs of people.
The legislator is committed to protect the interests of these people, he said.
He said the MLAs raise a variety of public issues and if they gets such threats, then they will not be able to fulfil their responsibility properly.
Gupta asked the top officers of the police department to ensure the safety of the public representatives at all costs.
Earlier, Gupta had written a letter to Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar demanding to increase the security of the MLAs who received threat calls.
Last month, BJP MLA Sanjay Singh had allegedly received an extortion call in which the caller identified himself as an associate of the Neeraj Bawana gang and demanded Rs 5 lakh.
According to a complaint later filed by Singh, he had also got an extortion message on WhatsApp on June 25.
Among the Congress MLAs, Safidon legislator Subhash Gangoli had on Friday lodged a complaint with the Haryana Police citing threat to his life.
He had stated that he received a threat message demanding Rs 5 lakh on his mobile from a Dubai number.
Congress MLA from Sonipat Surender Panwar too had earlier received a threat call from Dubai and the caller had demanded ransom from him.
On Friday, five men had allegedly barged into the Pataudi house of Badli's Congress MLA Kuldeep Vats when he was not there and roughed up his cook threatening to "set the legislator right like Sidhu Moosewala," police had said.
The cook told the police that the accused said that he should warn Vats that the legislator should not make any comments about gangsters or he will meet the fate of Moosewala, the Punjabi singer who was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Punjab's Mansa district on May 29.
Opposition Congress had hit out at the BJP-JJP government, with former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda saying the law and order in the state had collapsed in the state.
Hooda had alleged that the state has become a safe haven for criminals now and the situation is such that neither the common man nor the MLAs are safe.
Earlier on Friday, senior Congress leader Kumari Selja had met Haryana Governor Bandaru Dattatreya here and informed him about the legislators from the state receiving 'threats' in the recent weeks.
During the meeting, Selja urged the Governor to direct the state government to immediately enhance security of these MLAs and nab the culprits at the earliest.