After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration stripped the Muslim-majority region of its semi-autonomy and downgraded it to a federally controlled territory in 2019, Kashmir saw its first assembly elections in ten years on Friday. Since then, the area has continued to be unstable, with bureaucrats lacking democratic credentials leading it and an administrator appointed by New Delhi.
The Election Commission of India announced the new polls’ dates at a press conference in the nation’s capital, New Delhi, on September 18 and October 1. The vote will happen in stages so that the government can send out tens of thousands of troops if violence breaks out. Voting takes place on October 4.
Pro-Indian political parties will compete in the multi-stage voting process to choose a local government, consisting of a chief minister who will head the region’s government alongside a council of ministers.
A resident of Srinagar, the major city in the region, named Haya Javaid, said, “We are happy that we will finally have our election.” According to Malik Zahoor, a different local, “it would have been great if they (authorities) had also announced the restoration of statehood” for the area.
The People’s Democratic Party of Kashmir’s Mohit Bhan said the announcement was “too little, too late.” The area “has been reduced to a municipality” whereas it was “once a powerful state with special status,” he wrote on social media platform X.
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