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The
local administration of Jammu and Kashmir will not allow the
opposition members to leave the airport at Srinagar, the state's
main city, and have booked a return flight to New Delhi a few
hours after they land, top officials told Reuters.
Around eight senior leaders from several parties including the
Congress, Communist Party of India and All India Trinamool
Congress boarded the flight from New Delhi.
The situation in Kashmir remained tense with security forces
using tear gas against stone-throwing local residents in the
main city Srinangar on Friday, after a third straight week of
protests in the restive Soura district despite the imposition of
tight restrictions.
Speaking to the media before boarding the flight, the opposition
leaders said they wanted to assess the situation in the valley
which has been under lockdown for nearly three weeks now.
This would be the second attempt to visit the state by
opposition leaders and the first by Gandhi after Prime Minister
Narendra Modi's government withdrew special rights for the
Muslim-majority state.
The leaders of the Communist party were stopped at the Srinagar
airport during the their first visit.
The Jammu and Kashmir media department said late on Friday that
political leaders have been asked not to visit Srinagar at a
time when the government is gradually trying to restore public
order.
"If the situation is normal then why is the government
restricting us from entering the valley. On the one hand the
government says that things are normal and on the other they
impose entry restrictions, why so much contradictions," senior
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said in comments to reporters
before taking the flight from New Delhi.
(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed and Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar; Editing
by Shri Navaratnam)
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