Prime Minister Modi set to take a giant step to achieve Mission Kashmir

With his frequent visits to Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created a record of sorts. If his scheduled visit of 24 April 2022 materialises, he will become Indias first PM after 1980 to have visited J&K as many as 21 times.

 Modi is known to have toured Kashmir in the thick of militancy in 1990-94. According to the local BJP leaders, he visited all the valley's six districts in 1993 when most of the mainstream politicians had resigned under the fear and diktat of gun. Former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had escaped to London. Several of his ex-Ministers and MLAs had been killed by terrorists and others with exceptions like Aga Syed Mehmood, Mohammad Shafi Bhat and Mohammad Sayeed Akhoon had migrated and settled in Jammu.

 Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who worked as the union Home minister for 11 months in 1989-90, used to live in Delhi. Ghulam Nabi Azad, another former Union Minister from J&K, had reduced his visibility after his brother-in-law was kidnapped and, for his good luck, released. Farooq Abdullah couldn't even visit the funeral of his close relative Sheikh Sadiq, reportedly killed by Mushtaq Latram's Al-Umar Mujahideen.

 A year after hoisting the Indian national flag along with the then BJP President Murli Manohar Joshi and other party colleagues at Lalchowk, Modi traversed the length and breadth of the militant-infested valley. His subsequent low-key visits lent him an unmatched confidence. At his Lalkar Rally at Jammu's M.A. Stadium, on 1 December 2013, when he was Gujarat's Chief Minister and the BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate, Modi made a mention of his long-time association with J&K.

 Touring border areas, addressing public rallies, inaugurating projects, laying foundation stones and presiding over high-level official meetings, Modi visited J&K as Prime Minister as many as 20 times from his first visit on 4 July 2014 to his last on 4 November 2021. In a single year, most of his J&K visits happened in the year 2014, 4 July, 12 August, 7 September, 23 October, 22 November, 28 November, 8 December, 13 December and 16 December.

In 2015, Modi visited J&K three times on 1 March, 17 July and 7 November. His one-odd visit in 2016 on 19 April covered the inauguration of a sports complex besides the convocation of Mata Vaishno Devi University and inauguration of Mata Vaishno Devi Hospital at Katra in Jammu.