The Muslim-majority region historically disputed with Pakistan will go to the polls for the first time since the coup that saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoke its special status in 2019. The BJP has redrawn the constituencies to win a majority. But it is an open game with the alliance between the Congress and a local political force that wants to restore the autonomy guaranteed by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.
Srinagar (/Agencies) – Back to the polls after ten years. And for the first time since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked its special status in 2019. The eyes of Indian politics in the coming weeks will be on Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region disputed with Pakistan. Starting on 18 September and in three separate rounds across Jammu and Kashmir – the entire region which also includes the Hindu-majority provinces of Jammu – some 8.8 million voters will be called to the polls to elect the new local assembly. The results of the vote are expected on 4 October, along with those of the most populous state of Haryana, which will vote on 1 October.
The Kashmir issue has been an unresolved issue in South Asia since the end of British colonial rule in 1947, when the Indian subcontinent was divided between India and Pakistan. Islamabad has long defended the right to self-determination based on a UN resolution passed in 1948, which called for a referendum to decide whether Kashmiris wanted to merge with one or the other country. Since the late 1980s, local militias in the part under Indian sovereignty have been fighting against the government in New Delhi, which accuses Pakistan of supporting these “terrorist formations.” Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have died in this long conflict.
Against this decades-old backdrop, in 2019, Modi seized the opportunity of a local political crisis created by the breakdown of the governing alliance between his BJP and the local People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to abolish Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that granted Jammu and Kashmir special status.
By effectively eliminating local political bodies, Hindu nationalists degraded this territory, bringing it under the direct control of the federal government. They also changed its borders, separating it from Ladakh, the Himalayan territory bordering China. Most importantly, Kashmiris lost their autonomy in criminal law and inherited protections over land and labor. For the past five years, Jammu and Kashmir has been governed by an unelected administrator and officials, who have enacted measures justified by the need to “tackle separatism, promote greater economic development and fully integrate the region into the country.” This aroused the anger of the Kashmiri population, whose civil liberties were restricted and the media intimidated.
Now, with the end of the emergency phase, Jammu and Kashmir is going back to the polls to elect its local assembly, but with the prospect of less autonomy than before. Moreover, in the new layout of the electoral constituencies, the number of seats in Jammu (where the majority of the population is Hindu) has been increased and nine reserved seats have been introduced for the scheduled tribes, the recognised tribal groups, again non-Muslim populations.
The upcoming vote will therefore be a test of fire for the “new Kashmir” that Modi wants. Not least because the Hindu nationalists of the BJP will have to face the alliance between the Congress Party and the National Conference – the other major local party led by Omar Abdullah – which have expressly included in their electoral programme the restoration of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees Kashmir a special status.
In the parliamentary elections last spring, the BJP had won both seats in Jammu, while the National Conference had won two of the three seats in Kashmir, and Sheikh Abdul Rashid (known as “Engineer Rashid”), the leader of the even more autonomist Awami Ittehad Party, had won the third, to the point that Rashid himself remains in jail on charges of terrorism by New Delhi. In 2014, the BJP had managed to come to power by winning all the seats in Jammu and obtaining the support of the Peoples’ Democratic Party. Today, however, the leader of this political force, Mehbooba Mufi – who was head of the local government from 2016 to 2018 – has announced that she will not run in the elections, objecting to the limited powers assigned to the Assembly by the federal government. So the game is looking very open.
A crucial factor will be turnout. Historically, it has always been very low in this region, due to the high rate of boycott of Indian institutions. In the general elections last spring, however, it rose to 58% in Jammu and Kashmir as a whole, the highest in 35 years. And even the three constituencies in the Kashmir Valley, where abstention used to be widespread, recorded an average turnout of 51%, considerably higher than in previous rounds.
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