70 Ministers To Visit In 9 Weeks, Submit Reports: Centre's J&K Outreach

70 Union Ministers will visit Jammu and Kashmir over the next nine weeks as part of the centre's outreach programme, sources said Friday afternoon.

At least 10 of them will make their visits over the next seven days, starting with Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and his deputies - Kailash Choudhary and Shobha Karandlaje - who were in Jammu earlier today to meet farmers, scientists and other agriculture stakeholders.

Others scheduled are junior Tourism Minister Ajay Bhatt (Friday, Saturday), junior Minority Affairs Minister John Barla (Monday, Tuesday) and junior Communications Minister Devusinh Chouhan (Tuesday, Wednesday).

Also scheduled are junior Parliamentary Affairs Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal (Wednesday, Thursday), junior Commerce Minister Som Parkash (Wednesday to Friday) and junior Social Justice Minister Krishan Pal (Thursday, Friday).

Two senior cabinet members are also expected this week - MSME Minister Narayan Rane will visit on Wednesday and Thursday, and Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda will visit on Thursday and Friday.

The visits of other ministers is likely to be finalised in the next few days, sources said.

All ministers visiting J&K will submit reports to the Home Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office.

This is the second large-scale outreach effort by the centre since it controversially scrapped Article 370 in August 2019, and comes come after Prime Minister Modi met J&K political leaders in June.

In January last year 36 Union Ministers visited Jammu and Kashmir.

That visit was dismissed as "normalcy acrobatics" by Iltija Mufti, the daughter of PDP leader and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti; Ms Mufti, who handled her mother's Twitter account during her long detention, said the "outreach" reflected the BJP's "concern for vote bank politics"

Apart from the ministers, 13 Parliamentary Standing Committees (around 300 MPs) have already visited J&K, while Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla was on a week-long tour of Ladakh and Kashmir.