Unified headquarters meeting postponed to Saturday

SRINAGAR - The scheduled unified headquarters meeting was cancelled here Friday evening and now will be held Saturday.

Though there was speculation that the meeting was postponed due to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s unhappiness over the deaths of four civilians during protests in north Kashmir, an official statement by the state government attributed the cancellation to “senior police and paramilitary force officials being busy in the field”.

“The meeting of the unified headquarters, chaired by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, was scheduled to be held at 6 p.m. Friday, but was postponed due to the involvement of senior police and paramilitary officials in the field,” the statement said, adding the meeting will be held as scheduled Saturday.

Earlier, a close aide of the chief minister declined to comment on the rumour that Omar decided not to attend the meeting as a mark of protest against the deaths in firings, while other aides maintained that the meeting was cancelled “because there was no agenda for today’s (Friday’s) meeting”.

Apart from the four deaths, more than 47 people including 30 security men and protesters were injured in violence in the Valley Friday.

“Nine injured people were admitted in our hospital today (Friday) with bullet injuries, two of them in critical condition,” said a doctor at the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences at Soura here.

Doctors at the SMHS hospital in Srinagar city said eight injured had been admitted there, some of them with bullet wounds.