Kashmir elections 2024: Who’s in the fray and what’s at stake?

Indian-administered Kashmir – Kashmiris are set to vote to elect a local government for the first time in a decade, five years after India’s Hindu nationalist government suspended the state legislature and brought the Muslim-majority region under New Delhi’s direct rule.

The elections come weeks after New Delhi expanded the powers of its hand-picked administrator in the region, drawing criticism from mainstream Kashmiri parties as well as India’s main opposition Congress party. They say the government step has “disempowered” the region’s legislature.

Kashmir has been at the heart of a rivalry for 77 years between India and Pakistan, both of which govern part of the Himalayan territory but claim it in its entirety.

So how significant are the local elections and will they help resolve the region’s issues — ranging from high unemployment to deep-rooted grievances over political and human rights?

When are the elections?

The state elections – the first in 10 years – are scheduled to be held in three phases starting on September 18.

The second and third phases of voting will be held on September 25 and October 1 respectively. The results will be announced on October 8.

The elections are being conducted after India’s Supreme Court ordered that the region be allowed to vote for its representatives, in a judgement last December.

Nine million Kashmiris are registered to vote in a region that has traditionally been known for boycotts to protest against Indian rule.

But in the parliamentary elections held earlier this year, Kashmiris came out in large numbers to cast what analysts described as a “protest vote” against India’s decision to scrap the region’s limited autonomy in 2019.

Siddiq Wahid, an academic and political expert, told Al Jazeera that the main reason driving the large participation of Kashmiris in the election process is the collective desire to prevent the ruling Bharitiya Janata Party (BJP) from gaining power in Kashmir.

“This was the case during the recent parliamentary elections,” Wahid told Al Jazeera.

However, he warned that the BJP could gain if votes are split among Kashmiri parties.

What’s on the agenda in the elections?

Kashmir’s mainstream political parties have promised to fight for full statehood and the restoration of the region’s special status.

They say the legislature has been weakened into a municipality, with former chief minister Omar Abdullah saying the new chief minister would have to beg the New Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor “to get even a peon [menial labourer] appointed”.

Another indicator that elections are around the corner in J&K. This is why a firm commitment laying out the timeline for restoration of full, undiluted statehood for J&K is a prerequisite for these elections. The people of J&K deserve better than powerless, rubber stamp CM who… https://t.co/THvouV1TxF

— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) July 13, 2024

In an interview with The Print website on Monday, Abdullah said that the BJP-led government has “reduced Kashmir to a place where we are all political prisoners of Delhi”.

In July, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi clipped the state legislature’s power and handed the lieutenant governor more power, including control over police, public order and transfer and posting of officials.

Moreover, the state legislature won’t be able to make laws on education, marriages, taxes, property and forests, among others.

The Indian army stationed in Indian-administered Kashmir to quell armed rebellion already enjoys special powers.

The anger against Indian rule has deepened since the Modi government abrogated Article 370 of the constitution which granted special status to safeguard the region’s demography and culture. Modi has said the special status was a hurdle to the region’s development, since it placed restrictions on investments from outside in sectors such as real estate and property, and – according to the government’s narrative – made the integration of Kashmir’s society and economy into the Indian mainstream harder.

But Aneesa Farooq Jan, a Kashmir-based researcher, told Al Jazeera that while Article 370 remains a significant issue, there’s widespread pessimism among Kashmiris over what local leaders could potentially change, even if they wanted to.

“There is little hope among the people regarding human rights issues or political solutions.”

Radha Kumar, a New Delhi-based academic and author, said the powers given to the lieutenant governor were “utterly absurd”.

“I would expect both the new assembly and elected administration will make more noise than they might have done earlier like on issues of human rights,” she said.

The imprisonment of Kashmir youth, many of them in distant Indian jails, is also a major issue, as are local challenges such as a growing menace of drug abuse and unemployment.

“I am a student, I will vote hoping it might change the job scenario or help in releasing so many people in jails,” Tabinda Arif, attending a rally of the National Conference, the oldest party in the state, told Al Jazeera. “Everyone has suffered so much in the past five years, maybe things will change.”

Some voters, though, are disillusioned by the failure of politicians to keep their promises in the past.

“These politicians come when they need votes, and forget after coming to power. I am exhausted now. I have always voted till now, but it did not change anything for me,” said Abdul Rasheed, a 65-year-old farm worker in Pulwama.

“Only a miracle can change our situation.”

Will gerrymandering affect the outcome of the elections?

Kashmiri politicians and analysts have accused Modi’s BJP of “gerrymandering” the electoral constituencies on communal lines.

The constituencies were redrawn as part of the delimitation exercise in 2022 to increase the seat share of the Hindu-majority Jammu region at the cost of Kashmir Valley where Muslims are in the majority, they say.

Total seats in the regional assembly have gone up from 87 to 90, but the share in the Jammu region has risen from 37 to 43 seats while the Kashmir Valley saw an increase of just one seat to 47.

This move has been widely criticised for skewing representation in favour of Jammu, which has been awarded 48 percent of the seats in the legislature, though it accounts for 44 percent of the population.

The BJP has also been accused of backing independent candidates to split the vote, which could potentially weaken the opposition.

A record number of independent candidates are in the fray, with 145 names cleared for the first two phases.

But the BJP has rejected the accusations that it was backing independents to split the Kashmiri vote.

“This is all rubbish. We live in a democracy and independent candidates have a right to fight elections,” Ashok Koul, the BJP’s general-secretary in the region, told Al Jazeera.

“We are also enjoying growing support in Kashmir because people are witness to the development that we brought to the region. The opposition can say anything,” he said.

“We are expecting to improve our seat share in this election.”

Why are the elections significant?

This is the region’s first election to the local legislature since the last democratically elected government fell in 2018. Since then Kashmir has been ruled directly from New Delhi.

Many feel their concerns are not being adequately addressed by the federal authority.

“The residents are most powerless and helpless,” said Abid Ahmed, 20, an undergraduate student from south Kashmir’s Anantnag district who was attending a political rally in his village.

“We don’t know what the new government can do, but at least we will have someone to approach,” he added.

Many experts say that the significance of the election lies principally in what it symbolises.

“The election is not significant in terms of its impact on the functioning of the union territory [federally ruled territory]. But it has assumed importance given the fact that it [elections] have been transformed into a sort of referendum on Article 370,” Kashmiri political analyst Sheikh Showkat Hussain, told Al Jazeera.

Holding the elections is also important for New Delhi to demonstrate that “normalcy” has returned to the region after the controversial 2019 changes, said experts.

“A successful election and a local government will not only demonstrate New Delhi’s confidence in the local political actors but, more importantly, validate its claims of winning over the people,” said MW Malla, a Delhi-based Kashmiri researcher.

Who are the main players in the fray?

The National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are the major political players.

The NC, led by Farooq Abdullah, has dominated Kashmir’s political landscape for most of the last seven decades in Kashmir. The Abdullah family has also maintained close ties to India’s Nehru-Gandhi family, which leads the main opposition Congress party.

The NC is fighting the elections in alliance with the Congress party.

The party won two out of the three seats in the Kashmir Valley in the recent election for India’s parliament, but its senior leader Omar Abdullah lost to independent candidate Engineer Rashid.

The PDP is led by Mehbooba Mufti, who became the region’s first woman chief minister in 2016 in a coalition government with the BJP.

It won power in 2002 and emerged as the largest party in the 2014 elections. But the party’s decision to share power with the BJP in 2014 has angered some Kashmiris, who blame the Hindu nationalist party for the region’s current political turmoil.

That reflected in the results of parliamentary elections, in which it performed poorly, with Mufti losing the Anantnag-Rajouri constituency.

This time, Iltija Mufti, Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, is in the fray from the family’s home constituency of Srigufwara-Bibehara.

The NC has promised to work towards restoring the region’s special status and the repeal of the Public Safety Act (PSA), a controversial law used to detain people without trial.

The party has also said that it would seek amnesty for all political prisoners languishing in jails and pitch for dialogue between India and Pakistan to bring peace to the region.

However, the entry of the proscribed “separatist” group Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) and the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) led by Engineer Rashid into the electoral fray could potentially affect the poll arithmetic, say some analysts.

The Jamaat’s participation is seen by some as a breakthrough for the Indian state, which can claim to have integrated such groups that once advocated Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan or its independence.

Where does the ruling BJP stand in the polls?

The BJP has a strong presence in the Hindu-majority southern region of Jammu even as it tries to make political inroads in the Kashmir valley.

It has claimed that “terrorism” has been wiped out from the region. Yet though the number and scale of attacks by armed groups have reduced, they have not stopped.

In fact, the Jammu region, not known traditionally for armed attacks, has seen a rise in such incidents. Since 2021, the disputed region has seen the killing of 124 security forces personnel, with at least 51 of those deaths occurring in Jammu.

Addressing a political rally in Jammu’s Doda district on September 14, Prime Minister Modi said that the stones that were once picked up to attack the police and army are now being used to build a new Jammu and Kashmir.

“This is a new era of progress. Terrorism is in its last phase here.”

But on the same day, two Indian soldiers were killed in the nearby Kishtwar district by suspected rebels.

While the BJP is not expected to win in the Kashmir region, where it has fielded 19 candidates, it hopes to win most of the seats in the Jammu region, where it is contesting all 43 seats.