Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Jammu and Kashmir gives him the best opportunity yet to kill two birds domestic and international with one stone. Fresh from election victories in Haryana and Maharashtra that reinforce his growing popularity, Mr Modi is hoping to parlay the BJP's substantial support from within the Kashmiri Pandit community in Jammu and Ladakh to take control of the crucial state.
If, that is elections are held as scheduled in November-December 2014. The BJP, with no more than 11 seats in the 87 member house, is hoping to cash in on the anger of the people against Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's patchy rehabilitation of the seven lakh people displaced by the September floods.
Mr Abdullah would like polls pushed back. Hamstrung by delays in central assistance, he clearly sees the PM's announcement of a comprehensive package for J&K, as nothing more than pre-poll gimmickry.
While Mr Modi must ensure genuine efforts at post-flood reconstruction are not sacrificed at the altar of politics, with winter setting in, time is clearly running out for Mr. Abdullah as much as for J&K's desperate flood affected people.
With this, his fourth visit to the state in as many months, the second message Mr Modi sends out is to neighbouring Pakistan. With only days before the Million March in London and Islamabad's rhetoric matching the unabated firing on the border, it's no surprise that the PM's first stop was a morale boosting visit to Indian soldiers in Siachen, where the standoff between the two countries is at its iciest. Mr Modi's Mission Kashmir not just demonstrating to Kashmiris, that he stands by them but to Pakistan, that the status of J&K is non-negotiable.
