Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police A K Suri surely heaved a sigh of relief when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's rally in Srinagar on Thursday passed off without an incident.
The state intelligence in coordination with army intelligency units had intercepted messages from across the border indicating terriorists' plans to disrupt the rally, the first by a prime minister in Srinagar in 15 years.
There were reports that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba had dispatched suicide squads to strike at the rally's venue -- the Amar Singh Club.
Security was tight in Srinagar and fourteen ambulances were stationed at the Amar Singh Club.
All roads leading to the venue of the rally were barricaded. The venue itself was guarded by armoured personnel carriers. Buildings in the vicinity of the club were 'secured' twenty-four hours before the rally.
The club ground had begun filling up with people early in the morning with hundred arriving in Jammu and Kashmir State Transport buses.
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's daughter, Mehbooba, supervised the arrangements.
"Most of those who attended the rally were PDP [the Mufti's party] workers. Congress leaders and their supporters were conspicous by their absence," a senior leader of the ruling People's Democratic Alliance said.
Gul Mohammad, who travelled all the way from Shopian, where 24 Kashmiri Pandits were massacred by terrorists on March 24, wondered why prime minister did not even mention the incident in his speech.
"I am bitterly disappointed by the speech," a Kashmiri Pandit said.
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