Tight security and expectations of a meaningful dialogue await Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who arrives in Srinagar on Friday for a two-day visit.
The highlight of the visit will be a rally in Srinagar, the first to be addressed by a prime minister since 1987.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi was the only senior politician to address a public gathering in Srinagar last year.
The big question is whether the prime minister would take the initiative on starting a dialogue process or leaves it to N N Vohra, a low-profile retired bureaucrat.
Vohra is the latest interlocutor that the government has appointed to hold talks with various mainstream and separatist groups in Kashmir. His predecessors Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K C Pant and Wajahat Habibullah had failed to take the dialogue process forward.
On his previous visit to Kashmir in June 2002, the prime minister had announced an economic package and focused on the assembly elections.
Between now and then, the state has seen the ouster of the National Conference from power in a free and fair election and the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed government strengthening its grip on power even as it faces criticism for its 'healing touch' policy.
But a serious political initiative from the Centre is missing, and this time around that is what the separatists and the People's Democratic Party-led government want.
"When the prime minister visits the valley, the chief minister will request him in public to begin a meaningful dialogue for solving the Kashmir issue. The operative word will be meaningful," a source close to the Mufti told rediff.com.
State Forest Minister Ghulam Mohiuddin Sofi is among those who have called for broad-based talks, a ceasefire announcement by the prime minister and a dialogue with Pakistan.
Sofi, whose election promise was to fight for freedom on the floor of the House, was a proxy candidate of the separatist People's Conference.
The PDP-led government expects the visit to be a shot in the arm for its healing touch policy. It is also felt that if Vajpayee endorses the policy, it will only widen the gulf between the NC and the Bharatiya Janata Party -- allies at the Centre.
Even the separatists seem to believe that Vajpayee's visit might be the beginning of a dialogue process.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference had, at a meeting on Wednesday chaired by Professor Abdul Gani Bhat, expressed willingness to be part of a 'meaningful and result oriented dialogue aimed at seeking a permanent solution to the Kashmir issue'.
The Hurriyat exhorted the parties to the conflict to adopt a realistic approach.
Incidentally, the Hurriyat has called for a general strike during the prime minister's visit.
During his visit, Vajpayee, among other things, will lay the foundation stone of a railway bridge at Qazigund in Anantnag district.
He will also inaugurate the North-South corridor, aimed at linking Kashmir to Kanyakumari by road.
Vajpayee will address the convocation ceremony of the Kashmir University and chair a meeting of the Unified Command to take stock of the counter-insurgency operations in the state.
Whether the prime minister announces any political initiative or not would decide the significance of his visit.
Else it would be only a replay of his 2002 visit, when he announced a Rs 61.5 billion (Rs 6,150 crore) economic package, most of which went to building the Rohtang tunnel, which will pen an alternative route to Ladakh via Himachal Pradesh, and to the Udhampur-Katra-Qazigund-Baramulla railway project, which has not seen much progress since work began in the 1980s.
