Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi met and interacted with locals at Lal Chowk in Srinagar saying there is a positive environment and that the government was working to create a strong environment of change.

A group of 36 ministers had arrived in Jammu & Kashmir for their week-long public outreach programme including Union ministers SmritiIrani, Mahendra Nath Pandey, Arjun Ram Meghwal, G. Muralidharan, Anurag Thakur,Piyush Goyal, Aswini Choubey, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, G. Krishnan Reddy, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. The 36 ministers will visit 60 locations across the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and will hold public meetings at panchayat and block levels and inform the people about various schemes launched by the Centre particularly after the abrogation of Article 370 and how those programmes and schemes are set to benefit the people.

Thirty-six ministers will be arriving in J&K in batches and the exercise that began last Saturday will be concluded on Friday, January24. While Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi visited Srinagar, G. Krishan Reddy arrived in Ganderbal. On Thursday and Friday, Ravi Shankar Prasad will be visiting Baramulla.

Apart from inaugurating certain developmental projects are meeting with the officials to get a sense from the ground about the developmental needs of the people the BJP ministers will also apprise the people of various government schemes after the revocation of Article 370 and bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories. The BJP believes that this visit will help the Centre in assessing the ground situation post-revocation of Article 370.

Meanwhile, reacting to this visit, Jammu-based PanthersParty president Harsh Dev Singh said the government has failed to win the confidence of the people and called the high-profile visit a “publicity stunt”.He further said that people are not interested in merely seeing the ministers adding that they want all the restrictions to be lifted."At a time when the J&K today is not in a position even to pay salaries to its employees, the government will be spending from its coffers on the visit of the ministers,"IANS quoted Singh as saying.

The National conference termed this meeting as meaningless and futile exercise as most of the politicians including three former chief minister were still under detention.