India to hold first local polls in a decade in Occupied Kashmir

Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir will hold local elections for the first time in a decade, the head of the electoral commission said Friday, after polls were stalled in the disputed region following New Delhi's imposition of direct rule in 2019.

The Muslim-majority region has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and each side claims it in full.

"After a long gap, elections are due and will be held in Jammu and Kashmir," chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.

Voting for the region's assembly will be staggered over three stages between September 18 and October 1.

A total of 8.7 million people will be eligible to vote, the commission said.

Ballots from around the region will be counted all at once on October 4 and are usually announced on the same day.

Some see the polls as a critical step in returning the vote to the people to choose their leaders.

But critics say the 90-seat assembly will only have nominal powers over education and culture, and critical decisions will still rest in New Delhi's hands.

Some hardline Kashmiri leaders, who demand independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan, oppose elections because they see it as lending validity to Indian control.

They demand a referendum to decide the future of the Himalayan region of some 12 million people.

About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year freedom struggle that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989.

"Sufficient forces will be there to deal with any eventuality", Kumar said, especially following a surge this year of attacks in the southern Jammu region.

Elections for five seats in India's national parliament were held in June, and Kumar praised these as having passed off peacefully.

The vote saw a 58.6 percent turnout, according to the election commission, a 30-percentage-point jump from the last vote in 2019 and the highest in 35 years.

Key Kashmiri leaders, who previously called for an election boycott, are in jail.

The last assembly election was in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) entered into a ruling coalition with the Peoples Democratic Party.

The assembly was dissolved in 2018 after the BJP pulled out and the coalition collapsed.

In 2019, Modi's government cancelled the partial autonomy of the region, turning it into a federally-administered "union territory".

That change stalled planned polls, and since then there have been no local-level lawmakers.

Instead, it has been run by a New Delhi-appointed governor.

The 2019 constitutional amendment also divided the region.

One part, Jammu and Kashmir -- made up of the southern Jammu region with sizeable Hindu populations, and the mainly Muslim Kashmir valley -- will have its own assembly again after elections.

Another section, the high-altitude Ladakh region, which runs along the contested border with China, is not included in the assembly, and is also controlled directly by New Delhi.