By Shazia Yousuf
SRINAGAR, Indian held Kashmir
A day before the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is scheduled to visit the capital of the disputed Indian-held Kashmir for his first ever rally, Srinagar has been turned into a garrison with tens of hundreds of soldiers and policemen manning the streets and frisking almost every vehicle and passerby.
Srinagar's roads have been dotted with dozens of mobile checkpoints and barbed wire lay sprawled in scores of areas.
"In 16 kilometers, my car has been checked seven times and I have been frisked six times, and I am not even going toward (the rally’s venue). I hope tomorrow ends quickly so that we don't have to suffer more like this," Rohail Ahmad Wasti, a medical representative, told AA.
Days before the rally, the surprise checks on the city roads by the Indian armed forces had intensified and on Sunday, almost everyone who drove through Srinigar was frisked multiple times.
Hundreds of people in Srinagar mirrored Wasti's anger and exhaustion at the multiple checks they were being subjected to.
“There are more than 5000 security personnel guarding the event and there will be a three tier-security cordon. We have set up around 30 mobile checkpoints in Srinagar to make sure no untoward incident occurs tomorrow,” a senior police official told AA.
According to police in the Indian-held Kashmir, or IHK, 50 companies of armed personnel including the Indian Reserve Police have been deployed for Monday’s rally.
The Indian Army will not be part of the security apparatus in Srinagar, but it has been deployed around the capital as vehicles coming in from various districts are being searched at army checkpoints.
Army officials also told the press that there would be surveillance by choppers.
Modi's party, the Hindu right-wing Bhartiya Janta Party, has announced 100,000 people as the target number for attendance at the rally.
But according to sources in the Indian-held Kashmir government, the venue for the rally, Sher i Kashmir Cricket Stadium, does not boast that type of capacity.
Indian PM Modi had already come to Srinagar in 1990, at the beginning of the popular pro-independence militancy, as a junior leader of his party, along with then-party president, Murli Manohar Joshi, to hoist the Indian flag amid a curfew and heavy presence of Indian armed forces.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.
The two countries have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965 and 1971 – since they were partitioned in 1947, two of which were fought over Kashmir.
Since 1989, Kashmiri resistance groups in the region have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.
More than 70,000 people have reportedly been killed in the conflict so far.
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