UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi will visit Jammu and Kashmir on May 29, ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s two-day tour of the state scheduled to begin on June 7.
Official sources here said that after inaugurating a tribal cultural centre at Jammu and addressing a function organised by the Gujjar community in the winter capital, she will fly into Srinagar to lay the foundation stone of a colony for Dal Lake dwellers here. About 11,000 Dal Lake dwellers are being shifted out of the lake area as part of a major project to clean it. She is also likely to inaugurate Sangarmal, a new trade centre built in the heart of the summer capital and may hold a meeting with the Congress workers and leaders here and later with the key players of the ruling National Conference-Congress coalition.
It is believed in local political circles that she is apparently coming on the invitation of deputy chief minister Tara Chand, who is in-charge of the urban development ministry. Kashmir watchers say that her attending a Gujjar function could be aimed at salvaging the support of the community.