10 Janpath encore plays on in Srinagar

Women, who comprise a large chunk of the party workers, sang Kashmiri folk songs hailing the Gandhi family as ‘‘saviours’’ of Kashmiris. They shouted till their voices turned hoarse — ‘‘Soniaji you alone can understand our pain.’’

‘‘We share blood relations with this family. The member of this family can heal our wounds, which have been inflicted on us over last few years,’’ said Sara Begum who had come from Bemina.

Several women hit by the Valley’s unremitting violence said Sonia is the best bet for them as she would be more sensitive to their sufferings as she had lost her husband and mother-in-law to violence.

Many in the crowd also believe that the Kashmir trouble had aggravated mostly due to the Congress staying out of power at the Centre. ‘‘In the last eight years, since BJP came to the Centre they made no effort to initiate dialogue with separatists. It was at the insistence of Soniaji that BJP started talks with Hurriyat at the end of their tenure to please the electorate,’’ said Ghulam Hassan Khan, a farmer from Anantnag.

As the news of Sonia’s decision trickled in, the crowd turned raucous, cursing BJP and Sushma Swaraj in particular. ‘‘Sushma Swaraj hai hai, BJP hai, hai.’’

A few yards away, on a makeshift dais, party workers sat on hungerstrike. ‘‘This nation can only be lead by Sonia Gandhi and we wouldn’t recognise any other candidate for the post of PM,’’ vice-president of J-K Congress Abdul Gani Vakil said.