Lal Chowk is Srinagar’s nerve centre, often used for political articulation in the past nearly seven decades, besides being the business hub of Jammu and Kashmir’s main town.

With the BJP adamant to hoist the tricolour at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk on Republic Day and the separatists readying to impede what is seen by them is a deliberate attempt to taunt the people of Kashmir, the state government has geared up its law and order machinery as well as the local administration to meet the eventuality.

Political tensions with possible law and order issues are likely to return to the Kashmir Valley later this month as pro-independence Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has called for Lal Chowk chalo march on January 26 as a “counteract” to BJP’s plan to hoist the tricolour at Srinagar’s historic centre square coinciding with the Republic Day.

Srinagar’s old quarter, once the hotbed of Kashmiri insurgency and where the population’s protracted political discontent often finds expression on the streets with irate crowds of mainly youth clashing with the police and paramilitary forces was turned into an altogether different theatre for the supposed rivals to meet head-on on Wednesday.

A CRPF jawan allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with his service rifle on Tuesday in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district, officials said.

Police on Tuesday rescued a teenage girl in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir and arrested her alleged abductor within five hours of receiving the complaint, an official spokesperson said.

After an ostensible failure of yet another spell of “resistance movement” which overrode the Valley in the shape of a bloody civil unrest in summer 2010, the Kashmiri separatist leadership appears to

Kashmir Valley was on Thursday cut off from rest of the country as incessant snowfall forced closure of Jammu-Srinagar National highway, where over 100 vehicles were stranded, and cancellation of all flights to and from the international airport here.

Jammu and Kashmir high court on Thursday stayed the proceedings in the Machchil fake encounter case relating to the killing of three youths near the LoC in the Valley in April this year.

Curfew continued to be imposed for the second day on Tuesday in parts of Bandipora district in north Kashmir following sectarian clashes over the past two days in which four persons were injured.