Overview
- Police and security forces prevented separate National Conference and Bharatiya Janata Party marches in Srinagar and took some NC protesters into preventive custody on Wednesday, stopping NC near Rajbagh and BJP at Jahangir Chowk.
- The NC organised the gherao to press the Union government to restore J&K’s statehood, press for constitutional guarantees and push clearance of a pending reservation file while citing the Supreme Court’s December 2023 observation that statehood should be restored as soon as possible.
- The BJP’s planned march from Lal Chowk aimed to gherao the Civil Secretariat to demand action on unemployment, alleged outsourcing or sale of government jobs, delays in local-body polls and recent electricity tariff hikes.
- Authorities sealed roads around Lal Chowk, Jawahar Nagar and approaches to the Civil Secretariat and deployed large numbers of police to contain both protests and prevent physical escalation.
- The confrontation is mostly rhetorical for now with both parties using street mobilisation for political signalling; coverage differs on who was allowed to proceed and the dispute builds on the 2019 reorganisation of J&K into Union Territories and the unresolved question of when statehood will be restored.