‘Event management’: Foreign envoys visit Kashmir amid shutdown

Critics denounce trip as a ‘guided tour’ and an attempt by the BJP government to project a ‘sense of normalcy’.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir – A delegation of foreign envoys, including from African, European and Latin American countries, began their two-day tour of Indian-administered Kashmir amid an increased blanket of security and a spontaneous shutdown in some parts of the region. Soon after their arrival on Wednesday in Srinagar, the region’s main city, the envoys were driven to a college in central Kashmir’s Budgam where they met a select number of people, including the recently elected local body representatives. After visiting the college in Budgam’s Magam town, where residents observed a shutdown, the envoys visited the historic marble mosque on the banks of Srinagar’s picturesque lake.