Srinagar a fortress ahead of PM’s visit

Srinagar a fortress ahead of PM’s visit

The only cricket stadium in Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital, Srinagar, named after Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, has seen less cricket and more political exploits since it was carved out of the city’s spacious and picturesque Amar Singh Club grounds in the early 1980s. In fact, one of the two one-day international matches played here was also marred by a political outburst by the local population. It was on October 13, 1983 that the Indian team, playing the West Indies, was heckled by a vast section of spectators, with some of them even digging up the pitch during the lunch interval while chanting “Freedom, Freedom”. The second ODI was India versus Australia on September 9, 1986. Though the match passed off peacefully, the spectators cheered India’s defeat with cries of “Pakistan Zindabad”.

Once again the venue has been taken over by hundreds of security personnel, to be joined by elite Special Protection Group (SPG) commandos by Friday, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address a joint rally of J&K’s PDP-BJP coalition government here. The venue, like Chanderkote in the hilly district of Ramban where the Prime Minister will be addressing another “grand rally” after inaugurating the Baglihar-II hydroelectric project on Saturday, will be surveyed by air too, official sources said.

Srinagar is tense ahead of Mr Modi’s visit. While the summer capital looks almost like a fortress, the security in other parts of the Valley and Jammu region has also been strengthened further with gun-wielding policemen and CRPF jawans deployed to carry out random searches in markets and other places frequented by people. They have also laid makeshift check-points and drop-gates along roads where vehicles are stopped for intense searches.

In the evening, concertina razor coils were being unloaded at different places across the city as the authorities have decided to enforce a security lockdown in parts of Srinagar from dawn on Friday to hold back protests and rallies called by separatists to commemorate the “massacre” of Jammu Muslims during Partition. Already over 300 leaders and other activists of both factions of the Hurriyat Conference, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and other separatist organisations have been taken into “preventive custody” whereas some of their senior leaders, like Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, have been placed under house arrest.

The major crackdown against separatists began last week immediately after Mr Geelani announced a “Million March” would be held as a parallel show of strength to counter the PM’s Srinagar rally.

He said over a million people will join his “Million March” which will culminate in a rally at Srinagar’s TRC grounds, less than 300 yards from Sher-i-Kashmir Cricket Stadium, the venue of the PM’s rally. He invited all other prominent separatist leaders, including the Mirwaiz and JKLF chief Muhammad Yasin Malik, to the proposed rally in a display of unity and said the “Million March” would be aimed also at showing the outside world that “Kashmiris are against Indian occupation”.

J&K chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, on the other hand, has said the PM’s rally would be a turning point in the state’s history. The people of the state, he said, have great expectations of this visit as the PM “is a visionary and has his eyes fixed on overall development of J&K”. The ruling coalition partners expect the PM will announce during his visit a slew of measures to boost the state’s otherwise ailing economy, a huge package for displaced Kashmiri Pandits and another towards the rehabilitation of those who suffered in the September 2014 floods.