Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar (file photo)Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar's free use of the police force to spy on his political rivals and even cabinet colleagues has become an embarrassment for the BJP.
The State Health Minister Anil Vij dramatically caught hold of a man who was suspiciously moving outside the minister's chambers in the Chandigarh secretariat. When Vij questioned the man for dogging his steps, he confessed that he was from the intelligence department and his superintendent had asked him to follow the minister.
Vij, who was a contender for chief ministership when BJP won the Haryana Assembly elections, has now written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah that the chief minister had been spying on his cabinet colleagues. The leader of the Opposition, Abhay Chautala, earlier alleged that his phone is being tapped.
Ironically, it was Chautala's father, Om Prakash Chautala, who had been in the eye of a storm 24 years ago when two Haryana policemen were caught spying inside the Congress Headquarters at Delhi in 1991 when Chautala was the state chief minister while his party leader Chandrashekhar was the Prime Minister with the support of the Congress.
The 'spies' were caught by the Congress workers who took them to Congress President Rajiv Gandhi, who was so incensed that a partner was being snooped upon, that he withdrew support, leading to the collapse of Chandrashekar's brief tenure as PM. Now, senior Chautala is in Delhi's Tihar jail after his conviction in a massive teachers' recruitment scam.
Undeterred by that episode, Haryana, which touches Delhi on its south, west and north borders, maintains a huge police force in Delhi, led by an inspector general of police.
Many of them belong to the intelligence department and keep a watch on the movement of Haryana politicians and bureaucrats.
When the Union Home Ministry disapproved of it during the Manmohan Singh Government, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, also of the Congress, had said that a large number of criminals would move to Delhi across the porous borders and some of them even lived there; hence, they had to be monitored by the state police.
However, dissidents who opposed Hooda, such as then Union Minister Kumari Selja and then Congress General Secretary Birendra Singh (now Rural Development Minister in Modi government) had complained to Sonia Gandhi that they were being spied upon.
Apart from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, which borders Delhi on the east, also maintains a large force in Delhi. A special intelligence unit takes care of protection of Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav and five of his close relatives, who are members of the Parliament.
The state intelligence teams also keep tabs on Mulayam's political rivals such as Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayavati, who is a direct challenge to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, son of Mulayam. Punjab also used to maintain a big police force in Delhi, but the numbers have come down after the state returned to normalcy. Both the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi police keep an eye on the activities of spies from neighbouring states.
Though Vij has made a complaint against the Chief Minister for spying, Modi and Shah are unlikely to take any action, as they share an excellent rapport with Khattar. But Vij would be more careful, and he may resort to more dramatic methods to expose his shadows.
Tailpiece: In a bizarre twist to the fight between Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Central Government on controlling Delhi police, two constables have filed cases of defamation against Kejriwal for comparing Delhi police to male agents in sex trade. A dozen more constables may file cases, with the informal blessing of their bosses, and Kejriwal is liable to be arrested in each of these criminal complaints.
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