Srinagar,
Three key separatist leaders in the Kashmir valley called for a march to the historic Lal Chowk on Saturday, the day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting the state, but stopped short of appealing for a ‘complete shutdown’.

The call for march to Lal Chowk was jointly made by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik, who had on Friday held a closed-door meeting at Geelani’s residence here.

“The Prime Minister of India will try to give an impression to the world and to the people that the people of Jammu and Kashmir are living happily while the ground reality is different,” the separatist trio said. In their joint statement calling for a march to Lal Chowk, the separatists raised a litany of complaints, including “harassment of common people, detention of pro-freedom leaders and activists for participating in funerals and curbs on freedom of expression”.

The separatists, however, stopped short of calling for the traditional “complete shutdown” and instead asked “all businesses and offices to remain shut”. All appeals for marches to Lal Chowk have failed in the past eight years since the 2010 unrest as the authorities took pre-emptive measures and detained separatist leaders ahead of the designated dates.