JAMMU: Envoys of several countries, including member states of the European Union, visiting Jammu and Kashmir reached here on Thursday to assess the efforts made to strengthen democratically-elected local bodies.
They met Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha at the Raj Bhavan before interacting with various delegations, including those of civil society members and District Development Council (DDC) members, at a hotel in the winter capital of the union territory, they said. Soon after reaching Jammu, the visiting envoys met the Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Justice Pankaj Mithal at the court complex in the Janipur area of the city, the officials said. The envoys, who started their two-day visit to the union territory on Wednesday, are assessing the development work and the security situation, especially after the abrogation of the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and the DDC elections last year.
The envoys are from the EU, France, Malaysia, Brazil, Italy, Finland, Bangladesh, Cuba, Chile, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Senegal, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ireland, Ghana, Estonia, Bolivia, Malawi, Eritrea and Ivory Coast.
This is the third visit of foreign envoys to Jammu and Kashmir in the last 18 months after the Centre withdrew the special status of the erstwhile state besides bifurcating it into union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
