Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was to pay a landmark visit to troubled Indian Kashmir on Tuesday, a day after heavily-armed militants killed eight soldiers in the deadliest attack in the region for five years.
Singh was to be accompanied by Sonia Gandhi, the president of the ruling Congress party, for a two-day visit in which he will inspect major infrastructure projects and inaugurate part of a railway line to connect north and south Kashmir.
It is the first time the premier has visited the Indian-controlled part of the divided Himalayan territory - which has been the scene of two wars with Pakistan - since June 2010 and comes less than a year before India goes to the polls.
More than a dozen armed rebel groups have been fighting Indian forces since 1989 for the region’s independence or its merger with Pakistan and tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians have died in the fighting.
Armed violence had been declining steadily since the early 2000s but the region has been tense following the execution in February of a local man over a deadly 2001 attack on the national parliament in New Delhi.
Mohammed Afzal Guru’s execution, carried out in a New Delhi prison without first informing his family, triggered widespread protests in Kashmir where many doubted his guilt.