The Congress staged a sit-in on the stairs at the Uttarakhand Assembly on Monday, demanding the government publicly identify the VIPs linked to the circumstances behind the alleged murder of a 19-year-old receptionist at a resort owned by a BJP leader’s son.

The protesters also demanded an “honest probe” into the paper leaks vitiating government recruitment exams, and adequate compensation for the resettlement of families displaced by land subsidence in Joshimath.

Inside the Assembly, where the budget session began on Monday, Congress MLAs held demonstrations in the well with the same demands.

Carrying placards that said “Justice for the daughter of Uttarakhand” and “Justice for unemployed youths”, 200-plus Congress members protested at the gates of the Assembly in Bharadisain, the summer capital, and later on the stairs.

“A resort receptionist was allegedly killed by the son of a BJP leader because she had refused to oblige a VIP at his resort,” Yashpal Arya, leader of the Opposition, said in the House.

“The question papers of almost every job-related examination got leaked in the last four-five years but the government couldn’t lay its hand on the exam mafia. Nor is the government giving sufficient compensation to the affected families in Joshimath.”

Pulkit Arya, son of suspended BJP leader Vinod Arya and owner of the Vanantara Resort in Yamkeshwar, Pauri Garhwal, and resort employees Saurabh Bhaskar and Ankit Gupta have been arrested over the murder of the receptionist.

They are accused of beating and throwing the teenager into the Chilla Canal in Rishikesh on September 18 last year.

The girl’s family says, on the basis of a WhatsApp message she had sent to a friend, that she was murdered for refusing to give a massage to a VIP who was expected at the resort the following day.