Kashmir people vote in local polls amid freezing cold, intense security
SRINAGAR, India — Hundreds of thousands of people in Indian-controlled Kashmir voted Saturday amid tight security and freezing cold temperatures in the first phase of local elections, the first since New Delhi revoked the disputed region’s semiautonomous status.
Nearly 6 million people across the region’s 20 districts are eligible to elect 280 members of District Development Councils in a staggered eight-phase process that ends Dec. 19.
Authorities deployed thousands of additional soldiers in the already highly militarized region to guard the vote. Government forces laid razor wire and erected steel barricades on roads around many of the 2,146 polling stations set up for the first phase.
Election Commissioner K.K. Sharma appealed to residents to cast their vote and “participate in the biggest festival of democracy.” Officials said voter turnout was about 52% out of the eligible 700,000 voters for Saturday’s ballot.
As standard protocol for the coronavirus pandemic, authorities placed hand sanitizers, face masks and thermal scanners at the polling stations, where voters cast their ballot in freezing cold across the region.
India says the polls are a vital grassroots exercise to boost development and address civic issues and will uproot corruption from the region. Separatist leaders and armed rebel groups that challenge India’s sovereignty over Kashmir have in the past called for a boycott of elections, calling them an illegitimate exercise under military occupation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has fiercely campaigned for the election in the Muslim-majority region in a bid to replace local Kashmiri pro-India parties that had formed an alliance.
The Kashmiri alliance has vigorously opposed Modi’s government after it revoked the region’s semi-autonomous status in August last year, annulled its separate constitution, split the area into two federal territories and removed inherited protections on land and jobs.