Elections in disputed Kashmir region in India after removal of special status

Many residents of the disputed Muslim-majority territory with 8.7 million registered voters remain bitter over the 2019 order by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government to impose its control from New Delhi.

Since then, a federally appointed governor has controlled the territory, and the first regional assembly elections in a decade are seen by many as a matter of exercising democratic rights rather than practical politics.

Voters queued under tight security for the three-phase elections, which will be staggered geographically due to security arrangements and logistical challenges in the mountainous region.

“After 10 years, we have the right to be heard,” said Navid Para, 31, among the first to vote in the cool morning air in the mountains of Pulwama, near the main city of Srinagar.

“I want my voice to be represented,” he added.

About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, fighting a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including dozens this year.

Modi urged people to vote in “large numbers and strengthen the celebration of democracy”.

“Our problems have been piling up,” said Mukhtar Ahmad Tantray, a 65-year-old retired civil servant in Srinagar.

“The reins (of power)… have been handed over to the bureaucracy.”

Turnout is expected to be high, unlike in previous elections when separatists opposed to Indian rule boycotted the poll, demanding independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.

“The whole politics revolves around the conflict,” said Navin Kotwal, a 73-year-old trader from Doda in Jammu district.

“All I care about is that we want to be governed by educated representatives who can solve our problems.”

Farmer Ahmadullah Bhat, 47, said he voted “to have our own government”, saying he feared common land would be confiscated under federal control.

“I can now go to my elected representative to resolve our problems,” he said.

Election campaigns have been vigorous and have produced unusually open debates, but key decisions will remain in New Delhi’s hands, including security and the appointment of Kashmir’s governor.

New Delhi will also have the power to overturn legislation passed by the 90-seat assembly.

The final round of voting will take place on October 2. Results are expected six days later.

The territory, officially called Jammu and Kashmir, is divided.

On the one hand, the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and on the other, the Hindu-majority Jammu district, geographically divided by mountains to the south.

A third section, the high-altitude, ethnically Tibetan region of Ladakh on the border with China, was made a separate federal territory in 2019.

Some of the worst violence this year has taken place in Jammu, where Modi campaigned for elections on Saturday, vowing that “terrorism is in its final stages,” referring to rebel groups fighting Indian rule.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) say changes in the territory’s governance have brought a new era of peace to Kashmir and rapid economic growth.

The implementation of these changes in 2019 was accompanied by mass arrests and an internet and communications shutdown that lasted several months.

Although this is the first local assembly poll since 2014, voters participated in national elections in June, when Modi won a third term in power.

Farmer Syed Ali Choudhary, 38, from Jammu district, acknowledged that the Assembly’s powers will be “much less” than before.

But, he said, “something is better than nothing.”

Many Kashmiris are unhappy with restrictions on civil liberties imposed after 2019, and the BJP is running candidates in only a minority of seats concentrated in Hindu-majority areas.

Critics accuse the BJP of encouraging a wave of independent candidates in Muslim-majority areas to split the vote.

Lack of jobs is a major problem. The region has an unemployment rate of 18.3%, more than double the national average, according to government figures from July.

Critics say the central government has awarded major contracts, such as construction and mining, to companies from outside the territory.

“My biggest concern is unemployment,” said Madiha, 27, an unemployed graduate who gave only one name. “The cost of living has reached new heights.”